What I need is a graphics card for the development of static graphics and some animation that will have drivers for all flavors of Linux.

If I need to be specific as to what flavor of Linux, it would be Fedora and Ubuntu.

Hope that helps and the question is not too broad.

You might want to include what mobo and processor you have.
And what make and model of your desktop so someone can look up the specifications of your machine to make a recommendation.

If you install a high end performance graphics card you will most likely have to install a power supply that will handle the new card.

I'd stick with Nvidia as the ATI/AMD Radeon cards are good in performance but the drivers are buggy:-.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_family.html
http://www.amd.com/en-us/products/graphics

How much work will be done? The Intel drivers for the built-in graphics tend to be good so if you're just pushing a couple of pixels use those?

My apologies on the lack of specifics. Suffice it to say that I never buy "off the shelf" computers but only build my own.

Motherboard: ASUS M5A99FX PRO R2.0
CPU: AMD 8 Core
RAM: 16 GB Corsair
SSD: Samsung 850 EVO 250GB
HDD's: 2 X 3 TB WD Greens (RAID 1)
PSU: Seasonic only (650 should be adequate depending on the graphics card)

Yes, I know Linux will run on a 486, but with 25 years experience I have consistently found that overspec'd computers run better and have greater longevity.

Thank you so much for your feedback and questions.

I've not had a problem yet running NVIDIA, well, OK, I had to move from Debian Stable to either Testing or Unstable when I bought my 9800GTX but it worked fine. Currently have a lowly GT 640 so I'm not sure about modern hardware.

Found your mobo-
https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/M5A99FX_PRO_R20/

It looks like you have 2 expansion slots for PCIe x16 one 2.0 and the other 3.0.
If you want to you could install 2 graphics cards.

Since you already have a AMD CPU you may want to go with an AMD/ATI Radeon Graphics card but you don't have to.

The new Iris Pro graphics card by Intel will bring your animations to life.
http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/...developer.html
http://www.futuremark.com/hardware/g...+Mobile/review

It looks like Nvidia's top card is the GeForce GTX Titanx and the Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti is good too.
The AMD Radeon R9 290 looks like a good card but the R9's all have differnt GPU's.
http://www.techradar.com/us/news/com...-cards-1291458

Those cards are pretty pricey but the performance is out of this world.
(wasn't sure what you wanted as you didn't mention if your on a budget or not)

I'd go with the GeForce GTX 750 or above.
http://www.nvidia.com/object/graphic...s_buy_now.html

AMD has a lot of cards for desktops.
http://www.amd.com/en-us/products/graphics

Reading the reviews might help you to decide on which card to purchase.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...ew,3107-7.html
http://graphics-cards-review.toptenreviews.com/

I build my own as well, that way I know what I'm getting.
I enjoy every build.-

For this the graphics card is largely irrelevant.
2D or 3D? If 2D, again the graphics card is largely irrelevant. If 3D, it depends on the size of your models and if you want to use the videocard for rendering, too.

If all you do is 2D work I would recommend going for a cheap AMD card, 2D acceleration with the open source drivers works pretty good. If you do 3D work, it depends on your needs which card we can recommend, so to get a better answer please elaborate a bit about what it is exactly what you want to do.