[conspire] supported graphics cards?

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Ken Bernard (kenbernard at gmail.com):

> Hi to everyone at CABAL. I haven't been able to attend the meetings at
> Rick's for quite a while. Anyway, I just went to Fry's and bought a new PC
> since my current desktop is years old and much of the newer software
> updates will no longer "just install" or "just work."
> 
> I have tried to load Knoppix in the new box and have serious graphic
> display problems. Since the new box is using integrated graphics ( AMD, ATI
> Vision) I think that I can just pop in a supported graphics card and I
> should be good. I guess that I would need a card with native Linux support
> or there would be no way to install a new OS.

Ken --

1.  Just buying a low-end recently introduced box and worrying about
driver compatibility later is asking for trouble.  Really, why didn't
you bring a Knopping disc to Fry's and test-boot it _before_ buying?

(Also, I don't want to seem like I'm beating you up for going with the
low-end home-user-focussed HP Pavillion line, but that's exactly the
sort of model line that has the greatest incidence of driver problems on
newly introduced models, because they use the cheapest stuff they can
source, and the most recent, and those chips inevitably are difficult
driver problems from manufacturers who seldom cooperate with open source
or do so only very slowly.)

2.  'ATI Vision' is a marketing term only, and does not properly
identify the video chipset.  I'm guessing you're quoting HP's so-called
specifications.  If you want better information, one way to get it is
using lspci.

> HP P&-1414

HP Pavillion P7-1414

(Watch that shift key.)

In fact, your HPP7-1414 with AMD Trinity Quad-Core A8 APU has an
accompanying integrated AMD Radeon HD7560D GPU.  You'll want to bear in
mind that information rather than the meaningless term 'ATI Vision'.
(In fact, does my memory fail me, or doesn't 'ATI Vision' actually refer
to software they provide for managing the video?)

I'm pretty sure the proprietary[1] AMD Catalyst driver set, aka fglrx,
will support this problematically recent cheap video GPU.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Catalyst

> I suppose I will want to install CentOS 6 on the new box.

CentOS 6 with fglrx retrofit will definitely do it.  No new video card
required.

If you want to use a video card, damn near anything that wasn't
introduced in the last six months will be fine.  You got into trouble
because you bought recently introduced low-end hardware and just punted
on the driver issue until after your money was spent.

In the future, you might want to Not Do That, Then.

(BTW, as a corollary to that, you probably won't need fglrx for very
long either.  New CentOS releases roll in new X.org releases that
introduce open source support for newish video chips all the time.  If
the current release doesn't support your spanking-new low-end video chip
already, the next one will.)


[1] This driver set is said to now include both open-source and
proprietary drivers, which it didn't use to.  No idea what distros
bundle the open source portion, if any.  And by the way, check your
distro docs/wiki/etc. about preferred ways of retrofitting fglrx /
Catalyst, as such may exist.