On Wed, Dec 16, 2009 at 17:25, Marco Calistri
Wonder if, when purchasing a new laptop to be used with Linux in general and openSUSE in particular, must I be aware to the video card manufacturer?
Always. Video cards vs. what you plan to do with the computer regardless of desktop or laptop is important.
Right now I have an HP DV6230BR, which is equipped by a Nvidia GeForce Go 6150 and since openSUSE 10,3 it never caused problems.
Several new HP laptop models are now provided with ATI Radeon HD 4200: are there any issues related to this video card?
ATi is dropping support for older video cards with each new release of their binary drivers. If your computer use requires the features and functionality that the closed binary drivers provide (eg OpenGL support), then you really need to think seriously if you're getting any computer with an ATI video card. ATI's total disregard for their customers applies to all operating systems... not just Linux. They've pushed pretty much all but the more recently released cards into "legacy" status. With the Windows drivers, you still can use these older cards and the Windows legacy driver because the Windows deals with drivers differently. With Linux, your ability to use the ATI Legacy Linux drivers is tied to specific kernel versions and distro releases - this has been discussed a lot here on the mailing list. The open source community drivers for ATI are coming along, and they do work, but if you need more than the basic functionality, they you're not going to be happy with the results... maybe in a year or two things will be better... who's to say where the community driver development will get to. Basically... given all the trouble ATI has caused me, I will never buy another one of their video cards again in any computer.. desktop laptop, or whatever. nVidia, and even something as basic as an Intel GM945 are better choices. C. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org