Hi! I'm looking to get into the linux arena (likely with Ubuntu), and I just ordered a new HP computer... The problem is the graphics card. The invoice says it ships with an "Integrated ATI Radeon Xpress HyperMemory". Since I know little about graphics cards or linux at this point, can someone please tell me if this will function under linux? If not, I'm going to refuse to take it when it arrives because I tried to cancel it when I found out it didn't have the Nvidia graphics card I thought it did when I customized it, and they refused to stop making it. Thanks! =)

It'll probably work, but I haven't had much experience with ATI cards on linux.

ATI Linux driver FAQ

Here's a list of cards the ATI linux driver supports.

Here's a wiki about installing the ATI drivers on Ubuntu.

[Edited by - Will F on August 21, 2006 12:49:25 AM]

Thanks so much!!!! Does anyone know if the card will at least function enough out of the box to run the LiveCD and install? I'm fine with installing a driver later, but I would like to know if I need to do anything fancy and start-up to avoid problems. ^_^

IIRC pretty much any card can be run in VESA mode in order to start X and run a desktop. Sure, it slow, clunky and you're limited to VESA functionality, but it works.

Will it automatically do that when I load the LiveCD, or do I need to do something special?

Might need to do a bios update at least on laptop.
I had a friend that got an HP laptop with ATI a while back and he tried several different distro and everyone locked up during install.
Personally I wouldn't even bother trying to install linux on a laptop unless it had an nvidia chipset which I know will work.
He did finally get his favorite distro Ubuntu to work on it after doing a updating his laptop to the latest bios he told me later.
You can search your model here and see if anyone had any problems with your specific laptop

Does that advice hold true for a desktop model?

Quote: Original post by guyver23
Will it automatically do that when I load the LiveCD, or do I need to do something special?

Usually it does so automatically, though sometimes a distribution incorrectly tries to load a free reversed engineered nv or ati driver instead and crashes X. In that case you'll need to edit /etc/xorg.conf and restart X. It varies per distribution. If you don't know X configuration, just try various live CD's.

Thanks! Do you know anything about Kubuntu specifically?

[Edited by - guyver23 on August 22, 2006 9:42:44 PM]

Kubuntu is based on KDE instead of GNOME. I have tried both and I can say that while KDE has a nice suite of integrated applications, GNOME is far easier to use and is more customizable. You can always download both live cd's and try them out, then decide which one to install.