Is Linux still picky about hardware?

[kornphlake]

I've been out of the hardware loop for quite a while so forgive my ignorance. I know at one time Nvidia graphics cards were preferred for Linux because of driver support, is this still the case? I'm researching a low power machine that will serve as a content filter, the Celeron G440 CPU with integrated HD graphics is an interesting option because of it's low power draw but I'm somewhat concerned about graphics drivers, I'd rather not have to purchase a discrete video card. Should I be concerned or is Linux pretty much plug and play these days. I plan on running Ubuntu 11.04.

 

[lxskllr]

Ubuntu's pretty good with hardware, but it's still a Windows world, and you could get unlucky. Shooting from the hip, I'd say it'll almost certainly work, but you should look up the specific hardware you want to use to confirm.

 

[Jodell88]

I'll advise you wait a bit for 12.04. A lot has happened with graphics in a year, especially for Intel.

As for graphics support, Intel has actually been the best supported / less problematic than Nvidia and AMD. However, Intel and Nvidia is way better than AMD imo.

 

[kornphlake]

When will 12.04 betas be released, late may-ish?

 

[Jodell88]

The first beta is to be released on the first of March. The final version will be released on April 26th.

 

[PreferLinux]

Of course, any graphics card will work fine with the VESA drivers, just you won't have any hardware acceleration whatsoever.

 

[janas19]

Of course, any graphics card will work fine with the VESA drivers, just you won't have any hardware acceleration whatsoever.

This.

 

[MrColin]

IME both AMD and Nvidia have good drivers but they both break hibernate/suspend on ubuntu. The open source nouveau driver for nvidia cards provides some acceleration without breaking hibernate/suspend.

In your case I'd recommend a headless server setup with no proprietary driver installed. If you have windows clients you can use Xming+putty and do X11 forwarding for any gui apps you want to use on the server. If your clients are linux/mac you should be able to do X11 forwarding pretty easily.

 

[kornphlake]

I'm familiar with putty and ssh for administration, I had an Athlon XP setup with a GeForce4 card for a couple years running dansguardian and had few problems until the mobo went kaput. I'm comfortable enough with command line only for maintaining the content filter, I never put much effort into getting the accelerated graphics working and just ran it as a headless server instead, it wasn't fast enough for HD video or web pages with heavy flash anyway. With the cost of a barebones entry level pc at around $100 (I already have a HDD, PS and case) and used P4 or athlonXP systems selling for about the same price there's no reason not to build a new PC and save a few dollars on my energy bill and have a computer quick enough for basic web browsing. I'm converting a utility room to a small game room for the kids, it would be nice to have a PC in that room for light web browsing, while the real intent is to have a content filter, if the pc can serve double duty for the same price it isn't a huge inconvenience to plug in a monitor, keyboard and mouse, accelerated graphics would be nice although if it doesn't work out I can still use it for a content filter.

 

[LCTSI]

the AMD Linux drivers are still crap.
Because my group presented a great case, I bought two dozen Opti 980s (i5-2500 w/16GB) for my group at work w/ two AMD cards ea so they could run 4ea Dell P2411h monitors. Dreamy, right?

All but one of them have complained about crashes, display garbage when scrolling, and cursor artifacts. It took the first sucker two days to get all of his displays to work. Fortunately he was kind enough to Wiki everything internally and help everyone else so that my team didn't lose a lot of work hours.

These are the same GD problems I had in 2006 with X600 cards.

They run Ubuntu (10.04 LTS, 11.04, 11.10), SL6, Fedora 15&16, one runs Arch, one runs Gentoo.
The only one who *hasn't* complained is the lone guy who stuck with the Win7 install.
I'm still on a C2Q Opti 780 w/ a GT220, so I'm good there.

For your situation you'll probably be fine with the Intel IGP. You can add a GT220 or equiv if you need a hair more oomph.
I'd put the content filter in a VM so you can reboot it as needed without making your kids rage-quit Tux Racer.

 

[ultimatebob]

Of course, any graphics card will work fine with the VESA drivers, just you won't have any hardware acceleration whatsoever.

Eh, it depends on the graphics card. I've seen some integrated graphics chipsets that will either fail to find the monitor with the vesa drivers, or will get back an incorrect default resolution when it attempts to probe it.

You can usually fix that by configuring a custom ModeLine in the xorg.conf file, but not always.

 

[kornphlake]

I've been playing with ubuntu 11.10 on my desktop (Radeon HD4200 graphics) and my laptop (Intel mobile graphics something or other.) From the live CD, drivers for either graphics adapter were automatically detected and accelerated video seemed to be working, streaming 1080p from youtube or playing super tux cart was acceptable using either system. I'm pretty confident the Celeron G440 will work out, the Sempron 145 with a 760g mobo cost about the same but gives better performance (especially if I can unlock a second core) in most benchmarks, at the expense of higher power consumption. I guess I need to decide what's more important, desktop performance or low power consumption.

 

[Fallen Kell]

To be honest, I would rephrase the question, are hardware manufacturers still picky with supporting linux?

To that answer I would say, some are, some are not. In much the same way that you need to check that there are Windows 7 64bit drivers for your hardware (or Window 8 64bit drivers in the near future), you need to check that there are linux drivers which work with the linux 2.6 kernel (or 3.0 kernel in the near future).

 

[Red Squirrel]

It's hit and miss, and hope for the best, when you buy hardware, or want to install it on existing hardware.

But my experience has been that 90% of the time it will be supported. If it's not, there's usually a way to support it, but it's often easier to just buy another of the same type of hardware and hope for the best. The newer stuff is usually more likely to be supported.

 

[Aluvus]

When will 12.04 betas be released, late may-ish?

Ubuntu version numbers indicate the year and month of release. 11.04 was released in April 2011, 11.10 in October 2011, and 12.04 will be released in April 2012. Releases are scheduled every 6 months.

 

[VinDSL]

Ubuntu's pretty good with hardware[...]

Actually, Nouveau is looking pretty foxy these days, so ppl don't need to install 3rd party nVidia drivers in Ubuntu, to have a good looking display.

 

[Nothinman]

Actually, Nouveau is looking pretty foxy these days, so ppl don't need to install 3rd party nVidia drivers in Ubuntu, to have a good looking display.

But does it get you effective hardware acceleration and power management?

 

[Jodell88]

But does it get you effective hardware acceleration and power management?

Nope.

 

[Nothinman]

Nope.

Then it's still worthless to me since I suspend my laptop almost every day.

 

[LCTSI]

Then it's still worthless to me since I suspend my laptop almost every day.

Do you use the nvidia proprietary drivers?

 

[Jodell88]

Do you use the nvidia proprietary drivers?

I just did on my laptop with bumblebee. Everything works. *shrug*

EDIT: I went to play a game that enabled my nvidia card. It crashed hard.

 

[Nothinman]

Do you use the nvidia proprietary drivers?

Most certainly. I've been using them practically since they started producing them and have had very few issues. Most of them were PM related, but that's a lot better than it was 8 years ago.

 

[Scarpozzi]

I have to run Windows for quite a few apps that aren't Linux-friendly yet. Since I rely on linux for so many server-functions, I decided to find a good desktop distro and just installed Ubuntu 11.10 on my new work system, but I'm running it on VirtualBox which allows for 3D graphics (YES!).

I typically recommend doing virtualization when trying to figure out what you want and to help make your system more portable. It dumbs down the drivers necessary to get things working. The only issues I've had were getting video drivers to play nice for CentOS5 and VirtualPC 2007...but there are workarounds if you figure out what video mode it likes to be in during the installer screens. I like the thought that I can copy my virtual disks to a server and get to them just about anywhere....no matter what hardware happens to be on a particular desktop.

I'll probably fire up OpenSUSE, CentOS, and Fedora for kicks....but I'm really surprised at how simple Ubuntu was to get going.

 

[LCTSI]

Most certainly. I've been using them practically since they started producing them and have had very few issues. Most of them were PM related, but that's a lot better than it was 8 years ago.

You said earlier that DKMS modules like this violate the derivative works clause. How do you resolve the cognitive dissonance from using non-GPL code?

 

[Nothinman]

You said earlier that DKMS modules like this violate the derivative works clause. How do you resolve the cognitive dissonance from using non-GPL code?

I said it was a legally grey area and it wasn't worth using ZFS because of it. People have been saying the same thing about the nVidia drivers since they're release but no one has contested it in court because they'd rather have the working driver than not. The OSS drivers for nVidia cards are barely usable so if I want a usable desktop I don't have much choice but to use the non-free driver. ZFS would have to offer a whole lot more than I get now with XFS, LVM and md for me to consider that.