SUSE 10.0 - Graphic workstation video card
Hello list,
A first post from a Linux-user-to-be. It was about time to come forward and ask community for help and advice, after countless sleepless nights of research and visiting god knows how many linux forums (including this one) to get some informations I will need shortly. I'll try to be as brief as possible;
I'm buying a new desktop machine, where I intend to run, reluctantly though (cursing the day when Windows were born), double OS – WinXP 32 and .. based on what I learned so far and heard from people who know Linux – SUSE 10.0 (32-bit version), novice friendly distribution, hope so . I have no luxury to run SUSE only for the time being, since I'll be using machine for bread and butter – prepress, graphic design, photo editing, desktop publishing .. I live for the day when tools needed, namely CorelDraw (commercial Linux version extinct?), Photoshop, InDesign etc. will ALL be available in Linux versions, but for now...I have to work to live.
I painstakingly chose Linux freindly AND silent/cool running HW components that I sincerely hope will be a breeze to install under 10.0. I have no idea what individual SUSE ingredients (kernel, X,...) will say about my selection, but most of hardware on the list are supposed to work. I'm only listing those that have potential to »argue« with SUSE:
- AOPEN barebone with SIS761FX+965 MB chipset, Socket 754 with Athlon64 3000+
- Linksys WLAN WMP54G V4.1 Ralink chipset + WRT54GL router
- Seagate ST3160811AS SATA drive
- Kensington Expert Mouse PS/2,Ser. trackball (scared already about Linux install)
- Happy Hacking Lite2 keyboard
- Plextor PX-230A CD burner
- NEC LCD1700NX or EIZO L565 (second display will be added later on)
... and a quality decent 2D workstation graphic card to work hand in hand with TFT LCD. This is where I’m lost, not with the choice of PCIe cards, but trying to figure out which (if any) one I will be able to install without headaches .. chances are, none of my preferences will be trouble free:
- Matrox G550 PCIe 32MB DUAL DVI: trouble free, except one “minor” trouble – in order to be able to use DVI with LCD, I have to install this HAL MGA library. I’ll be ... if I know how am I gonna do that, but at least I know it can be done.
- PNY_NVIDIA Quadro FX-330 64MB PCIe (NV37GL): some sources on the net say no sweat, other users (first installation) sweat a lot. Beats me if I know, but I’m cautious about problems with higer resolutions that I read about, as well as dual DVI setup.
Novell/SUSE site says no trouble (full support for Athlon64 and SUSE 10.0) for both cards, but in real life things are obviously different. Obviously I will have to make my decision upon best 2D quality criteria (Matrox) against a few other graphic design consideration, like occasional 3D usage (FX-330) for web site layout design, but would like to hear your recommendations based on behaviour, possible complications and ease of installation of these two cards under SUSE, using dual DVI outputs.
Comments and recommendations about the rest of listed HW in Linux/SUSE context would be appreciated as well. If there are any HW-SUSE 10.0 related traps (OpenGL with Quadro FX-330), please point them out and recommend some trouble-free previous version (9.3?). I apologize for not including more relevant details about HW (FW versions etc.), as instructed in "What to include...", but all these components are still in shopping cart - so I only included details that I know.
Thank you all in advance, I’m sure lots of questions will follow once the hard work of installation is done and I’ll start using Linux...I’m hardly waiting.
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