[sdiy] Another new hard to find part....

[Rainer Buchty]

> I have 3 boxes that I use as Linux servers, but they won't support the
> GUI in anything more than the basic SVGA mode, which denies me the full
> resolution of the video cards.

Which makes me wonder what kind of exotic video cards you're running.

Under Linux, you might be a turn or two late when it comes to
state-of-the-art graphics cards and getting access to their special
features, but *at least* resolution setting works fine. There might be
issues with 3d acceleration, but that's another story.

ATI and nVidia actively support Linux nowadays; and all the other stuff is
quite nicely handled by the standard xsvga driver.

So far I ran a fair share of graphics cards under Linux, from stone-age
S3-Trio, a more recent S3 Savage/MX, ATI RageIIc, Matrox Milennium and
some more recent nVidia. Never had a problem with *resolution*, but
couldn't get the 3D acceleration for the Savage/MX to work two years ago
(or better: didn't want to go the hassle to build a special Xserver
version needed for a special package which might have enabled 3D
acceleration). There might be an out-of-the-box solution present these
days.

> To run Linux with the GUI, I'd yet again have to go out and buy either
> another box, or at least another video system.  What's the point of the
> free software when I can't use it on the 6 freaking computers I already
> own?

Until proven otherwise, I'd rather say you're doing something wrong or
you're using some really weird piece of hardware.

If resolution is all what you care for, then you always have the
possibility to use the framebuffer device and speaking plain VESA with it.

> I also don't want to tink around with a kernel that I am not qualified
> to tink with and could likely break it.

Then go with a distribution which does all the update stuff automagically
for you, like e.g. SuSE Linux. I'm quite sure, RedHat and Mandrake offer
similar mechanisms.

Rainer