Distribution with built in support for ATI X1600 Pro?
 

Hi all,

I am really very keen on giving Linux a try. I have always been a Windows user but would really like a change.

My main concern is, being a real newbie to Linux, how much trouble am I going to have because I have an ATI 1600 Pro (512MB Sapphire PCIE)? I have read of various people having hard times getting it to work.

Is there a distribution with built in support as of yet? Or if not, what is the best distribution for supporting this if there is one?

The rest of my system is AMD X2 4200, 1GB RAM, 2x250GB SATA, 2x250GB IDE, Asus A8R-MVP motherboard.

Thank you in advance for any responses and help.

the problem is not Linux or distros, it is ATI and their choice to refuse to support linux.

change to a Nvidia card and 99% of your problems will go away.

Well, I can only guess - not having ever used an ATi card. Though if I look through the synaptic GUI package management tool in this Kubunut 6.06 (the current one), I see a nice little list of packages marked as FGLRX i.e. the driver for ATi cards.

I can't say whether it would install it by default, but it shouldn't take too much messing around to get it installed. Under Mandriva, I used to have to get the "paid for" version to have the nvidia and/or ATi driver pre-installed/pre-compiled otherwise you had to do that yourself (it's a licensing thing specifically).

I'm given to understand from various sources, that the current "buntu's", are coming out top of a number of distro test articles for ease of use/n00b friendliness, so if you are using KDE as your desktop, maybe try Kubuntu, or if you like Gnome, then Ubuntu. It's only one CD so shouldn't take long.

Sorry I can't be of more specific help my friend.

regards

John