My boss asked me to put together a Linux desktop machine that we'll use to replace our older microsoft PCs at work. If the price is right, we may be building a lot of Linux desktop machines next year! :-)

I'm having trouble finding a cheap, basic video card that comes with a Linux (2.4 or 2.6 kernel) driver. The other alternative is to use an integrated graphics chip, but we want to consider a PCI or AGP card as well.

Can anyone recommend a video card for my project?

nvidia has an install for both kernels.
i'm assuming you are going to have the machines boot up into xwindows, so just don't use a console framebuffer and you should be fine.

What distro would these machines be running? As a general comment though, if you are looking for low-cost, compatible video cards, your best best would be to look at either manufacturer's close-outs and surplus equipment. For example, the ATI Radeon 7500 (which is what I'm using in one of my machines) has apparently been discontinued, but offers decent performance and will work OK with the standard "radeon" driver.

What you'd definitely want to avoid is the latest, cutting-edge cards (which presumably would be disqualified anyway due to the cost constraint) -- J.W.