andrew carter

I’m down to a really small number of computers for me. At various times in the past, I’ve had as many as 10 computers between work and home that I actively used. Currently, I only have two - my MacBook Pro and a Dell PowerEdge 400SC server I converted into a workstation. My primary workstation had been a PowerMac G5 2.7. I sold it about a month ago. PowerPC is a dead end without virtualization support in my opinion (or at least for what I do).The Dell had been kind of sitting in the corner and not getting much use. Now that I only have my laptop, I’m getting the Dell back into action. It is a pretty good computer. It was sold as a server but had a mainstream (and reliable) Intel desktop board in it. It has two primary factors against it as a workstation - no front USB ports and a small (250W) power supply.Despite all that, many people have turned the 400SC into one of the best bargains Dell ever sold. It is a P4 2.8GHz machine that was less than $400 when it was new over 3 years ago. I’ve run Windows XP, FreeBSD, and various Linux distros on it. It went in the corner last summer when I tried to play Oblivion on it. It was either upgrade the video card or buy an Xbox 360. I bought the game console.Getting back to the point of all this - Ubuntu is now shipping experimental “desktop effects” in 7.04. Basically, this is Aqua/Aero for Gnome. X.Org finally is entering the 21st century and using the 3D card everyone has. Not that it didn’t take Microsoft just as long to figure the same thing out. I don’t necessarily need 3D in Linux but given that I’m using this machine more as a workstation now, it would be nice. Years ago, I had bought a ATI Radeon 9800 Pro card for it. At the time, this was a powerful card. It could run games like Half Life 2 well. However, I quickly found out that ATI is underwhelming on Linux to put it mildly. I’ve seen benchmarks showing that the ATI Linux drivers are about half the performance of the Windows drivers. Assuming you can actually get them to work.I’m pragmatic when dealing with drivers in Linux. Even if there is an open source driver, I’ll use the close source driver if the performance is better. I spent a couple days off and on messing with getting the ATI up and running on 7.04 with 3D acceleration. I finally managed to get the open source driver to work and could at least see the desktop effects. But it was unsatisfying.I figured “I can throw money at the problem and get a new card”. I also figured that “AGP is dead, cards must be cheap”. Nope. First of all AGP selection is limited. To both ATI and NVIDIA’s credit, they have good representatives from their full line of graphics card (performance wise). However, pricing seems out of line. After some research, it appeared the overwhelming consensus is to run NVIDIA for Linux. Unlike ATI, NVIDIA apparently shares over 80% of the code between Linux and Windows driver. Consequently, NVIDIA’s drivers have little performance difference and they often will support cards before they are even released due to the unified driver architecture used by NVIDIA. OK - now we’re talking. I needed to find a cheap NVIDIA card that was better than the 9800 Pro (why buy a new card unless it is a step up, right?).Since getting out of Windows gaming, my graphics card knowledge isn’t up to date. My last few Mac purchases were all ATI based. I haven’t had an NVIDIA card for at least a few years. I was totally lost in the sea of numbers used to identify all the card options. I feel sorry for people who aren’t in technology who try to go out and buy a video card for little Johnny to play games. I bet it is intentional. 7300 is got to be better than 6800 right? Not by a long shot. How is a consumer supposed to figure this out? And reading the specs on the box are mind numbing even for me.My brother is still an avid Windows gamer and likes to fund ATI/NVIDIA research by buying new video cards. With his help, I found something that seemed reasonable - the 7600GS line. The GT line has much faster memory and will outdistance the GS. But it is around $50 more. I found a GS for $120 after rebates. I had hoped to be in the $50-80 range but frankly cards in this price range are not much better than integrated graphics chips.In Ubuntu, driver install was very painless (click a box in the Restricted Drivers Manager and you have 3D acceleration). It does a terrible job at detecting monitor settings so I had to reconfigure my xorg.conf to get the right resolutions. That was not a problem with the Radeon. Desktop effects are cool and look very nice. But they are indeed experimental. I mostly want the transparency to work. I use it heavily on OSX and not just as eye candy. I find it very useful for layering shell windows, keeping track of running processes, and generally getting feedback from the system. Unfortunately, the current version has more than a few rough edges. It breaks windows maximize and workspace switching is messed up. Both of those are features I typically use. Transparency is very well done. I like how X does it for inactive windows. This is better than OS X. I also like their take on Expose and on switching windows with Alt+Tab. Both are as good or better than the Apple version. I like the idea of the wobbly windows. It is a very slick effect where windows bend and sway as you move them. It conveys a very strong sense of motion and velocity and gives it an organic feel. However, it’s turned up a bit much for my taste in this version. I’m sure it will eventually be something that users can tweak.Lessons learned:

• Linux desktop still has a ways to go. Everything is there to succeed. When it runs, it is getting close to OS X and is far superior to Windows. But 10+ years and you still deal with driver crap. Why?
• NVIDIA is the only choice for Linux right now. ATI’s performance problems make it pointless to go to the trouble to try. NVIDIA on the other hand has first class driver support including a very nice control panel for advanced settings and full OpenGL 1.4 support.
• AGP is overpriced. And eBay is not a solution. The good AGP cards are still very relavent. The best bet is probably the 6800GTX but no one will get rid of them.