System of the Year, Linux Style

Bob the Blob writes "LinuxHardware has put together a wonderful article that gathers up all of the top hardware into the ultimate Linux system from 2001. In the article, there is a review of the hardware from 2001 that discusses what we've seen and why the parts were chosen. To make you drool, think Athlon XP with GeForce 3 Ti500 with the stability of Linux." Worth noting that this machine is of course now at least 10 days obsolete ;)

Comments

This just in

[Chundra]

Slashdot posts advertisements as news.

Re:This just in

[greenfly]

I agree that one can get along nicely with an oldish desktop system. I still use my Libretto 50CT for a laptop, and it works nicely. But I wouldn't think of seriously running KDE or Gnome fulltime on it's 100Mhz processor and 32Megs of RAM. E runs on it, but not as quickly as I'd like, so I use Windowmaker. But when you start doing things like playing MP3s, you can forget about doing much else if you don't like skipping.

While these aren't things that many people are doing yet, there are some reasons why getting a top-of-the-line system like that would be nice, such as up and coming games and video encoding.

But for basic stuff, you are right, you can get by on very humble system specs.

Obsolete?

[ackthpt]

I thought one of Linux' charms was that it delayed obsolesence. I.e. find the lost power of that old 486/66.

Still pretty impressed with what it does on my 70MHz SparcIPX (it's got a sped up processor ;)

SWEET!

[clinko]

Now i can take this baddass linux box and reboot to windows to play games even faster!

Re:SWEET!

[DRO0]

I'm sure some would consider your post as troll-ish, but it does lead to a valid point.

What's really so great about having a GF3 on Linux? The most graphically intensive games are probably Quake3 and UT and a Voodoo3 on up work more than adequately for them. For fun gaming at the price of a GF3 I'd get a Nintendo Gamecube with Super Smash Brothers Melee and Madden 2002.

I'm running an Athlon 1.2Ghz and a GF2 MX and don't feel that I'm suffering at all. Plus with RAM so dirt cheap (I have 768 or something like that), the longevity of hardware is even greater IMHO.

Geforce 3 on Linux? Whatever for?

[I.T.R.A.R.K.]

"To make you drool, think Athlon XP with GeForce 3 Ti500 with the stability of Linux."

Now what exactly are you going to run on Linux that will take advantage of the Geforce 3?
Blazing fast command line with realtime pixel shading? C'mon people. Get real.

If you even suggest rendering software, I'll tell you this: I run everything from Maya 4, to 3DS Max R4 and even Bryce, and the rendering times on my Geforce 3 aren't much different from those of my old TNT 2 Ultra.
Fix the other bottlenecks in the system before you start playing with the video cards.

Re:Geforce 3 on Linux? Whatever for?

[bigjocker]

There are two main areas in 3D production, modelling and rendering. These kind of cards are for the first part, modelling and creating the animation files.

When you have millions of polygons and want to spin the camera, you need a card of this quality. It has nothing to do with rendering, which is a processor intensive task.

Sure, you can model a landscape in bryce with any card, but when you have the LOTR balrog sitting in Houdini or Maya, you need something really powerful, even the Geforce 3 will not be enough.

For the rendering phase you have the clusters and render farms, and there you need an 1's and 0's cruncher, and a CGA card will do the job as good as the Geforce 10.000 ...

GeForce? Feh.

[Snowfox]

It seems like a 'Linux System of the Year' ought to fully embody the Linux spirit, which nvidia does not. I'd much rather see a Radeon in there.

nvidia cards are severely limited if you're not willing to run the closed-source drivers. nvidia still won't share all of the information about their cards needed for activating DVI-D and other parts of the display output hardware, as well as pieces of the rendering hardware.

Admittedly, nvidia has done a decent job of keeping the closed-source drivers up to date for 98% of the users out there, but simple things like using an nvidia card as your secondary/tertiary display can still lock your system up, and there's not much you can realistically do to fix that without the source.

Re:GeForce? Feh.

[ImaLamer]

While I see your point about open source very well, I can't fully agree.

At least there are drivers available. They could have simply ignored linux like plenty of other hardware vendors and left you to deal with it on your own.

In a fantasy world we would have the source to everything, but that isn't the case. If for say, a company was going to reveal trade secrets, we shouldn't shun them because they are protecting them.

Sometimes we aren't going to get the source. It's that simple. Be happy we have drivers at all really. They did what they could to make you happy.

I believe this is the reluctance to release games and the like for the linux OS, people bitch if it's not 100% Open Source[ed].

Re:GeForce? Feh.

[geekoid]

Couple of points:
OS advocates say is fast release times, lower bugs, and quicker bug fixes then most CS projects, but, If a company wrote good software, fixed bugs quickly, and had a fast release time, why would we need OS?
If MS came out with a truly secure, well written, stable OS, wouldn't that kill most off the advantages of OS?

Re:GeForce? Feh.

[Osty]

Or, you could lose the conspiracy theory and enter the real world. nVidia will not release the source to their drivers for one simple reason -- they have a lot of intellectual property tied up into those drivers, property they developed by spending millions in R&D funds. Opening the drivers is simply an invitation for their competitors to steal all their hard work. Maybe that's fine if you subscribe to RMS's unreachable utopia where no proprietary software exists (and nobody goes hungry, and nobody shits, and we all sit around singing filk songs at morale meetings ...), but here in the real world that's the perfect way to bankruptcy.

So, you say, why don't they just give us the specs to the boards, if they won't open the drivers? The answer here is two-fold. First, it can easily be dismissed by the IP argument above. But that's a cop-out. The real reason is because nVidia uses a unified architecture that allows them to write drivers that will work on any of their cards, from the oldest Riva TNT (not the Riva128 or earlier) to the latest GeForce 3 ti500. Releasing register-level information would undermine that process, and generate many different, incompatible drivers. I for one like to know that regardless of what nVidia-based graphics card I have, I can always go to www.nvidia.com and get drivers that will work. So why don't they release the specs to the layer above the register-level hardware? Intellectual property :) (hey, you knew it was coming.)

As for underperforming drivers, that's a by-product of nVidia's aggressive production cycles (where they generally try to have a new product or a refresh of the last product out every six months). They learned their lesson way back in the day, after nearly going under because they took so long on the nv1 (oddly enough, Sega bailed them out by contracting nVidia to do the graphics in the Saturn, and now Sega is the one in financial trouble and nVidia has moved to a different console manufacturer ...). If you only have six months to get your new hardware or hardware refresh out the door, you don't have much time to work on drivers. However, driver development is always happening (just look at the frequency of "leaked" alpha and beta drivers). And on top of all that, and as a by-product of the above unified design, all owners of nVidia products (well, again, anything RivaTNT1 or newer, anyway) benefit from these driver advances. Two years after buying a TNT2 Ultra board, I was still able to get a performance increase simply by downloading the latest drivers (well, I run a GF3 now, but because of nVidia's aggressive driver development, my TNT2 latested much longer than a comparable 3dfx board for example).

Point: You need to learn how nVidia runs their business (and it's a good lesson to learn, as nVidia went from near-bankruptcy to insanely successful in only a few short years) before you go promoting conspiracy theories with no basis in reality.

Re:GeForce? Feh.

[rgmoore]

I think that you miss the point. The point is not to blast NVidia for releasing only binary drivers but rather to reward ATI for making open source drivers possible. The Radeon is at least competitive with the GeForce, and given a choice between two competitive products, the Ultimate Linux Box should pick the one that is most in keeping with the spirit of Linux, i.e. Free/Open Source Software.

Re:GeForce? Feh.

[Greyfox]

They'd have to start designing and coding from scratch. There's a lot of baggage they'd need to jettison. And they can't start from scratch because that would mean losing their foothold.

Linux has a lot going for it outside its stability and security. Look at what you get. You get an entire system with all the tools you could possibly want. For free. And Microsoft can't match that because they make their money selling those tools. Hell for what their OS costs, I could install Linux AND buy a bunch of Loki games.

If they did come out with an OS that blew all that away, I wouldn't have any qualms about switching over, mind you. I choose my OS because it's the best way to run my computer and that's pretty much it.

Re:GeForce? Feh.

[dan g]

The problem isn't just with the ethics of people who want to use open source software. If you have a closed source module loaded into your kernel and it oopses on you, you only have one recourse: take the oops to Nvidia--even if the crash was in your scsi driver or the network layer. Kernel developers won't touch bug reports from people who have proprietary drivers loaded because there is no way to know what that driver is doing to other parts of the kernel (without disassembling it).

dan.

Re:GeForce? Feh.

[Snowfox]

I don't see why you'd even want a decent graphics card for a Linux box. It would just be a waste of money. Unless you like to go around telling people that your server/development machine has a bitchin' video card.

Judging by the number of presenters using Linux at Siggraph, the number of people playing games under Linux, and the number of people like myself who make video games for a living and prototype things under Linux, I'd say that your view of Linux is a bit more narrow than the reality of the situation.

Re:GeForce? Feh.

[subsolar2]

I recently faced the choice between going with a GeForce3 Ti 200 and a Radeon 7500.

I picked the 7500 because:
1. I've never have gotten nVidia's drivers to work on my system.
2. I believe it's good to support hardware vendors that support open source.

I believe that voting with my wallet is the only way to effect change with hardware manufacturers. So my last two purchases have been an Epson USB scanner and now the Radeon since both companies support open source developers.

nVidia needs to open up the drivers so that it can be properly be supported under linux. The only way to reach the "fantasy world" is by making the choice to support the companies that work with the community.

- subsolar

Re:GeForce? Feh.

[ImaLamer]

We must remember that NVidia had ALWAYS promised to release open source drivers for all their products until about a week before they signed an agreement to supply the hardware to the X-Box... Funny that..


Exactly my point. It seems that most, if not all nvidia cards use the same sort of programming.

If they released the source they maybe opening the xbox to hacking. I support said hacking, but in the business world they don't.

So instead of replying to the rest of the comments posted under me, let me do it here:

Yes, it would be ideal if they opened the drivers. If you want to support companies that do open the drivers, by all means... do so. But please also see that drivers are in fact released and they work a lot of the time.

If you are having problems with the card and drivers, please direct your bug reports and oops's to nvidia. Since they have released some working drivers, maybe they need some help.

Sorry we can't always have it our way, but sometimes we get close.

If you have a problem with the GeForce, and it not carrying on the linux creed, complain to ThinkGeek as well. Ever seen those ads?

Re:GeForce? Feh.

[Error27]

>>Sorry we can't always have it our way, but sometimes we get close.

One way to have your own way is to buy a radeon. It has an open source driver. I would buy that before I baught a geforce.

But then again, I really like to get my own way.

Re:GeForce? Feh.

[Snowfox]

Matrox has had better Linux support than ATI or Nvidia for a long, long time. To be fair, their offerings don't compare when you're playing games, but if you aren't building a gaming box, you're quite likely to be very happy with a Matrox card. And there are top-notch *open source* Matrox drivers. And Matrox drivers are pretty stable, unlike (cough) Nvidia's.

I'll second, but clarify as well. Matrox is much closer to open source than most any other accelerated driver provided by a card/chipset manufacturer.

It does include a closed-source portion however, but I believe it's limited to the microcode that gets downloaded to the card. It would be nice to have that as well, but so far it hasn't stood in the way of fixing bugs and porting the driver to non-PC architectures.

Re:GeForce? Feh.

[HiThere]

You've described quite well their reasons for not releasing the source. (Well, some of them.) But those don't directly affect me. What affects me are things like:
1) Will it work?
2) Will it continue to work when I upgrade?
3) Will it work when I do a clean install from a distribution's CDs?
4) Can I adapt it to suit my needs?

So I'm not directly interested in their justifications for why they are doing things the way that they are. I'm interested in whether I can use the tool that they are selling to do what I want to do in the way that I want. For this open source has definite advantages. (And this even though I'll never write a video driver in my life.)

If there are any advantages to me in a closed source distribution, I don't see it, and several decades of unpleasant experiences show that there are many disadvantages.

Open source also has its disadvantages. Linux has gotten a lot better in the last couple of years, but I had a struggle getting started. And the word processors are still clunky, though they're getting better fast. etc. The flash and splash is slow to appear, and things tend to never achieve a finished look. (KDE and Gnome are clear exceptions here, but consider even their basic applications for examples.) But you don't get hung out to dry. I've never had an open source application leave me, though I've left several of them. Indeed one of the main problems with Open Source is the "embarassment of riches" problem. How does one choose! In the major categories this is settling down to a few major choices, with the others reserved for those with special needs. But compare this with the Windows word processor market. They one uses MS Word. (Unless one is a lawyer .. then one may use Word Perfect.) And if that's an inappropriate tool, use it anyway. There aren't any significant options. Think how much that simplifies choosing. Of course, the version keeps changing, new versions appear to be heading toward application rental rather than purchase (lease, officially). So you can expect to be hung out to dry regularly. But you don't need to worry about too many choices. And it's quite polished. (Debugging is a totally separate concept.)

So...
To my mind, a better choice for "the ideal Linux system" would have had open source drivers.
.

Oh, yeah.

[Mike1024]

Hey,

To make you drool, think Athlon XP with GeForce 3 Ti500 with the stability of Linux.

That will be useful! The $300 graphics card will be ideal for all the 3D-intensive games that are only availiable for Windows!

Michael

Re:Oh, yeah.

[TedCheshireAcad]

That will be useful! The $300 graphics card [pricewatch.com] will be ideal for all the 3D-intensive games that are only availiable for Windows!

Unfortunately, this is true.

But, just think of your TuxRacer framerate.

Re:Oh, yeah.

[BrookHarty]

Doesnt RTCW (Wolfenstien), Q3A and Tribe2 also have linux ports?

How 'bout a "decent" system

[tif]

I've seen the "ultimate linux box" articles before. What I wish they'd write is the "affordable and reliable linux box". In other words, just tell what's a good sound card for linux, a good video card, etc.

--tif

Re:How 'bout a "decent" system

[DeltaStorm]

I've seen the "ultimate linux box" articles before. What I wish they'd write is the "affordable and reliable linux box". In other words, just tell what's a good sound card for linux, a good video card, etc.Just hold on to those articles for a year or two, then you'll have a "decent" system.

Re:How 'bout a "decent" system

[TedCheshireAcad]

LinuxHardware.org does hardware reviews, but of course, they plug their own stuff.

Internet.com has a decent hardware review site, but this is mainly geared towards server hardware.

ZDNet also has a pretty decent Linux section, with hardware reviews and compatability lists.

And, if you want to get straight to business, Google has a wealth of information regarding tech review sites.

Hope this helps,

Ted

What does Linux have to do with it?

[gpinzone]

I don't get it. I've seen "dream" systems before, but what's the tie in with Linux? I mean, a fast system is a fast system. Who cares what OS you're running?

Oh wait. I see. This is the best system you can get with peripherals that have Linux drivers. Well, that narrows it down a bit.

Re:What does Linux have to do with it?

[budgenator]

I'm not an expert on these things, but my understanding was that these proprietary drivers often add an additional layer to the OS and generaly slowed things down a bit.

If a card was well supported by conforming to the published standards, it didn't need a propietary driver and in most cases should be expected to run faster using the OSes built-in, highly stable and well-tested drivers in both Linux® and Windows®.

In a dream system the goal is maximum concurency of tasks. You get that by the CPU doing CPU tasks, the modem doing modem tasks, the hardrive controller doing the hardrive tasks as well as the video card doing the video tasks. When the card lacks intellegence and forces the CPU to help out, things tend to get slower and glitchy.

I've seen Windows applications crash and burn on launch, because of non-standard OEM drivers

POS HSF

[linzeal]

Cost: Thermaltake Dragon Orb 3 - $20.00

Anyone use these things? If you get a hardon for those window kits and want to show off these are fine. If you actually want to cool/overclock these are POS. Did they get paid by thermaltake to use all their products I mean listen to this, "Other supplies we'd like to mention all come from one company, Thermaltake. Thermaltake is a total cooling solutions company and provide the best products for many of those extra cooling jobs." WTF? For anyone interested in some real cooling for about 20 bucks more and peice of mind the damn fan won't die check out this. I have no comment on the memory coolers as they give a whole whopping 1 degree celsius of difference in tests I've seen. Were these people stunned stupid into liking shiny impractical things?

Ultimate -Linux- System?

[FortKnox]

I only have one question:

How is something the ultimate Linux system, and not the ultimate AnyOS system?

Now I know this is a troll, but jesus, people! Writing an article and slapping "Linux" on it to make a slashdot article? Its pretty pathetic!

Depends on how you describe "ultimate"

[Stiletto]

Clearly this system is in no way "ultimate" in terms of price/performance, reliability, or open-ness of software and hardware.

It would be educational to see what system LinuxHardware could come up with with a $1000 spending cap, and a requirement that it reach a 60-day uptime under constant use.

Re:Depends on how you describe "ultimate"

[lanalyst]

For XMas, I built a more modest version of linuxhardware's version: xp1600+, soyo d+, 512MB PC2100 DDR, MSI GF3 ti200, plextor 24/10/40 CDRW, antec 400W PSU, HSF. I had a case and a maxtor 60GB IDE drive already for it. I spent $900 with burn-in and shipping.

They chose all scsi, which is a bit over the top IMO - the dragon+ has 4 IDE controllers for 8 devices (2 of which are promise raid which can run as normal ide for linux). The PC2400 memory is overspec for the board (unless you want to boost the FSB beyond 148).

RH7.2 installed without a hitch - lan and audio drivers found and installed no problem. cdrecord is happy with the CDRW - no configuration there. I installed nvidia's drivers and have full opengl - that did require a kernel recompile (because of the the athlon I think). lm_sensors is working, etc. All on a board that was released in November - says a lot about the state of linux drivers.

Point is, I believe I have a rock solid system that by any measure meets price/performance/value.

I can also run the FSB at 143 reliably which shows the cpu/mem benchmarking as a xp 1800+. The geforce 3 ti200 can be overclocked to come close to a ti500 (the MSI driver provides overclocking in the windows driver - a linux version -nvclock - is available at http://209.167.100.83/ (evil3d).

I'm satisfied.

Not even close

[A nonymous Coward]

I use free-as-in-speech software because I have been burnt too many times by closed source software which changes in ways I don't want, or doesn't change in ways I do want, or goes out of business, or changes its licensing model, or doesn't keep up with the times and won't work with newer software. Etc etc etc.

I WILL NOT be burned by proprietary software again if I can help it!

As a semi-aside, my original disgust for Microsoft was the patronizing "we know what you want" attitude of their software. Then of course there was the bugginess of it. I also grew to loathe their business non-ethics. A few years ago, a wonderful job went away when some vulture capitalists would not fund a friend's startup "because M$ would dup the effort and we wouldn't get our money back". And since then M$ has compounded all reasons for disgust. However, all this disgust for M$ is not why I use free source software; it's because I don't want to ever again be trapped in proprietary software over which I have no control.

Re:Not even close

[HiThere]

You left out licensing issues. Borland is pretty good about their licenses. Something that's intended as a tool doesn't need to be distributable. (They still have the product obsolescence problem that you were talking about, but that's distinct.)

At one time the MS license allowed one to use a single copy of the software both at home and at work. That's long in the past, though. The recent licenses have started from you need one license per computer and gotten more restrictive from there. They are clearly headed toward "you need to buy one license per computer per year" or possibly even something as predictable as "as often as we say". This is totally unacceptable to me.

It is remarkable just how many people believe that the way to deal with unjust licenses is to ignore them. This only works for awhile, however. If you have agreed to terms, and the software evolves to enforce them, then you have no protection at all. Being dependent on software that uses that kind of license, then, is quite short-sighted. A court might not enforce an unduly restrictive contract, but if the product self-enforces (e.g., disables itself after so much time), then it is unlikely to order the manufacturer to fix the problem, and if it did, so much time and expense would pass during the trial and the appeals that you would be out of business before the matter reached its conclusion. And then the matter would be declared moot. "There's nobody to complain, so there's no complaint."

If corporations are people, then this is murder. Premeditated. But there's no prosecution for this kind of murder. (Well, I deny the hypothesis, but that's the way the logic looks to me.)
.

Re:NVidia Source Code is Available

[Snowfox]

What the heck are you talking about?! NVidia provides full source code for their linux drivers. Just download them from the driver page!

They are just not GNU licensed. So I guess we can't upgrade them ourselves. Big friggin deal, I'd rather the HW manufaturer did that anyway. The Kernel hackers can still see what's going on in the code, for debugging purposes.

They do not provide the full source. They provide what amounts to a bunch of stub functions which link to closed-source binaries.

This is akin to saying that Microsoft gives full source because you have header files for using their libraries.

Nomination.

[saintlupus]

The article seems Slashdotted, but from the summation I can only assume that this is another desktop x86 setup.

I'd rather like to nominate the iBook as the portable Linux dream system of the year. The TiBook is a little too flimsy for a clumsy oaf like myself, but the iBook is an indestructible, lightweight, brilliantly engineered machine. There's an Apple on the outside, but even if you eschew OS X for Linux, it's still the best bang for your buck in laptops from 2001.

--saint

Low price, high uptime.

[saintlupus]

It would be educational to see what system LinuxHardware could come up with with a $1000 spending cap, and a requirement that it reach a 60-day uptime under constant use.

An iMac running OS X, would be my suggestion.

Oh, it has to run Linux? Yeah, good luck with that.

--saint

Re:Low price, high uptime.

[gmhowell]

Good luck with what? iMacs run Linux. Just ask these guys.

Re:Low price, high uptime.

[saintlupus]

Good luck with what? iMacs run Linux.

I know, and on my iMac (running YDL 2.0) it was a mess. X was crashing left and right, even on the default desktop (KDE) and without changing a whole lot of anything. I reinstalled a couple times, it didn't fix it.

OS X, on the other hand, is both significantly more stable _and_ handles most of my hardware correctly. (Linux couldn't see my Firewire CDRW, while OS X can't see my cheapass printer. Sort of a tossup.)

However, to get off the tangent, my original comment was aimed at the fellow looking for a solid *nix on a sub-$1000 machine. OS X on one of the bargain $799 iMacs is a great choice.

--saint

practice what they preach?

[gmhowell]

Maybe they should get themselves a server that doesn't get slashdotted.

I'm sure the GeForce really helped there.

Why are all these systems of the year x86 based?

[HanzoSan]

When x86 is the weakest design of them all.
Good for gaming perhaps, but Linux isnt really a gamers OS.

Why no Itanium based PC? Sparc? What about SCSI Raid 0, what about bandwith?

As if a Gforce3 really matters on a Linuxbox that cant even do Alpha channeling yet in the GUI, and as if it matters if you have an AthlonXP thats designed for Windows?

System of the year for a Windows user yes.
But for Linux? I could do better. When building a system you build it for the software that you run on it, not build it because everythings name brand.

Ok so lets say you run games, Thats when you need Gforce 3. (Linux users dont apply here)

Lets say you do alot of graphics manipulation, then you need perhaps another card.

Things that all users can use is alot of ram, SCSI raid, and a fast CPU, but unlike Windows Linux runs on any CPU, people always forget that.

The only problem with Itanium is its price, but for System of the year, price shouldnt be the issue.

Morons

[Perdo]

Did they forget the flaw in the via chipset thet prevents any PCI scsi controller from exceeding 60mb/s? Adaptec/cheetah combo is a complete, utter waste of effort on that board.

Re:Morons

[Perdo]

Motherboards equipped with VIAs chipsets do not offer the full performance specified for PCI. This problem affects both new cards with Ultra-ATA/133 controllers and fast SCSI setups.

the register's take

Tyan makes some via chipset motherboards but you may be talking about the dual AMD tyan motherboard that uses the AMD 760MP chipset. It has no problems at all unlike the AMD 760mpx chipset that has absolutely completely broken usb support

Games, of course.

[cduffy]

My GeForce 3 Ti500 is put to quite good use running Loki's port of Tribes 2 (at 1600x1200).

All I want is silence

[Zo0ok]

I can't help it, but as a non-gamer I find all computers on the market today more than sufficient for my needs. Any CPU that I can buy brand new is enough. Memory is more or less free, and 512 Mb is more than I've ever needed. A 20Gb hard drive makes it. Most graphics adapters can do 1600x1200x85.

I just want something that is "completely" silent. My Mac G4 is not silent. My IBM Thinkpad is not silent. The Sun Blade 100 at my work is not silent.

There was an article a few days ago on Slashdot telling how to build a quiet performance PC. I believe dropping "performance" could make it even more silent.

How do I build a machine (to run my favorite free os) that is completely silent?

Re:All I want is silence

[joss]

If you only want to run linux it's trivial:
build an X terminal with a slow fanless CPU and no disk (boot from floppy) and a fanless power supply.

Put your real PC somewhere else. Make it as bad ass and noisy as you like.

Re:Why are all these systems of the year x86 based

[nuintari]

Yeah, I couldn't disagree more with your statement regarding Linux not doing games. My current favorite four games run in Linux, often better than on my windows 2000 machine. My Linux box has a geForce 2 MX in it, my windows box has an ati 8 MB rage pro something. Guess which is the better video card? And yes, I put it in my Linux box, I get better performance out Quake 3 Arena in Linux.

The Linux Gamer market may be a niche inside a niche, but were there, and we can be just as loud as annoyingly bad starcraft players on Battle.Net

fact 2?

[budgenator]

I have a dual-boot machine and the Windows® 95A side absolutely chocks on the installed modem card, and has developed what I think are BIOS related problems, (P 90MHz ISA system) but my Linux® side of the machine runs fine at least for a P90.

Re:GeForce? Feh. (Reverse engineering the drivers)

[Snowfox]

Is somebody working on that?

ATI, probably. :)

There is an open-source nvidia driver (nv) project under way. It doesn't support many things like the DVI-D output, and it's slower than the nvidia driver. I'm not in any way involved, so I don't know whether they've had a look at the nvidia drivers. I'd expect there would be legal problems in doing so, however.

Anyone know for sure?