hi all, i just bought this barebones kit from tigerdirect.com...

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...&CMP=ILC-FPM08

AMD Athlon 64 FX60 CPU
Asus A8S-X SiS Socket 939 motherboard
Power Supply: 500W Ultra V-Series
Fan: Ultra 2200 rpm X-Wind Copper Fan

i'm new to building up a linux box, but i'm thinking the only real "gotcha" i might run into is the video card. This computer will be networked with ethernet cable - so wireless wpa headaches don't apply.

I'd appreciate any advice on a decent budget video card to compliment this system that won't cause a lot of headaches with ubuntu and / or simply mepis. i've been using mepis for some time, but i think i might give ubuntu a spin or dual boot ubuntu and mepis.

any help with a video card recommendation would be appreciated - or with any issues i may run into but don't know it yet.

tia...

I would just go for any modern card with an nvidia chipset. Nvidia provides official drivers that are easy to install and work very well on all Linux distros.

i'm looking at this card right now... seems to be decent for my price point...

EVGA GeForce 7300 GT / 512MB GDDR2 / SLI / PCI Express / DVI / VGA / TV Out
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...&sku=E145-7874

again, i'm new to all this, so if anyone has any comments or ideas to add, i'd appreciate it.

this one also looks decent...

BFG Tech BFGR76256GTOCE GeForce 7600GT 256MB 128-bit GDDR3
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814143049

and this one...

EVGA 256-P2-N550 -T2 GeForce 7600GT 256MB 128-bit GDDR3
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130073

anythoughts on which one would be better in which circumstances?

i see the latter models have less dram (512 to 256). is that a big deal? my guess is the rest of the board is more advanced so it offsets the reduced ram.

again, tia...

Not sure which one would be better, but just pick any you like because they both should work fine on Linux.