Driver issues :'(

ATI on linux is slowly getting better, but it still has a long way to go. I have an ATI HD5850 and I run arch linux on a separate partition.

Basically, the open source drivers are great, they have kernel mode setting and run very well for 2D applications, but if you want to run 3D then forget it. The official catalyst drivers do not support kernel mode setting and seem to work fairly well. However, my KDE desktop effects aren't running great yet, although all my games work fine.

I have just switched over from an NVIDIA 8800 card which ran great, super fast, no problems with anything as long as you run the proprietary NVIDIA driver. Personally, I would go for the NVIDIA one, but this is just my opinion.

Definitely stick with AMD/ATI original drivers (although dunno if they are for X1950), it will do better, I have HD 5470 on my laptop with Linux 2.6 based system and it is working fine (for both, gnome and applications).

Just looked, there are for X1xxx drivers for Linux x86 and Linux x86_64 based kernels, although I think it will be just for Linux 2.6

yes if youre going to use linux, then get a laptop with a nvidia GPU in it.
In the last month I installed linux (ubuntu10.10) + winXP Getting hardware acceleration on linux was much easier than on winXP

I really do not see a point in getting a new machine with Linux, unless it's really work related.

Desktop machine is either Mac or Windows. The OS with new machine is free or costs a fraction of hardware.

Linux runs beautifully inside any virtual machine. VirtualBox is free and runs on both platforms. It's also possible to run in seamless or similar modes, meaning one can have complete Linux distro running as equal peer without any configuration hassles.

Add to that that I have yet to see a laptop that would support all hardware extensions under Linux, such as sleep, power saving modes, hibernate, keyboard extensions and such, and one simply ends up with a gimped machine.


I mention this specifically since the question doesn't seem to be about doing extensive 3D work on Linux exclusively. It turns out it's considerably simpler to develop on either of those systems and just debug things inside VM. At least based on my experience.

And for doing any kind of end-user 3D on Linux, one either needs to use some higher level abstraction (Java perhaps) or have enough testing options. Even Google struggled with Chrome port and Flash is still a mess.

It's just my opinion that Linux is not, nor will it ever be desktop ready. Linux shines in console and on server, preferably via some ssh tunnel. On desktop the alternatives are just vastly superior.