Hello everyone,

I am getting a new Dell Studio Desktop shipped to me on Thursday and I want to order a video card that will work with most Linux distros...especially Ubuntu/Linux Mint.

I have read all over that Nvidia cards are the way to go for out-of-the-box support. I am looking for 512MB-1GB (probably leaning more toward 1GB...I would like to play fallout 3 on my Windows partition). I am planning on playing 3-D first person shooters on the Linux side (Alien Arena, etc.)

Any links to Newegg/Tigerdirect are more than welcome. Thanks!!!

Get whatever is in your price range that dell offers. Any nvidia card will work out of the box with basic 2d support and the nvidia drivers support all card right up to the new 300 series, so all will work great on linux. Nvidia even provide instructions for installing them.

If you are buying a dell, would you not be better getting the card from them, rather than buy from newegg?

What graphics support is in that Dell system?
Why is that graphics support not enough?

I don't know what kind of graphics support is needed for which games in Windows. From what you didn't say in your post, I would guess that you want to run games for which the standard graphics support in the Dell system is not enough. So your real question should be about what graphics chipsets are powerful enough for those games.

You also need to make sure the new graphics card is compatible with the motherboard and the power supply in the Dell. That may be the hardest part to determine. I guess you already ordered the Dell, maybe even for some good reason. I would not have chosen a Dell system if I planned to add a high end graphics card from elsewhere.

Linux compatibility is probably the least of your concerns in selecting the graphics card. You are probably a little safer with a card with an nVidia graphics chip on it. The non open source nVidia drivers for Linux are quite good.

Deffinitely NVidia - the drivers are very good and can be installed through a magic GUI druid program, so its painless :P

Also, the DKMS system in the kernel ensures kernel/driver updates are simple and safe too (as long as you install from something like Synaptic or apt-get)

James