[TriLUG] CCI machine Linux compatability

[crimsun at fungus.sh.nu]

On Thu, Jan 15, 2004 at 01:14:20PM -0500, Faheem Mitha wrote:
> I am writing to ask whether anyone has any Linux experience with either of
> the two desktop machines described at

Here at NC A&T, I've configured several quite similar machines for Red
Hat 9. They work flawlessly.

> >From the descriptions given, I'm not sure what to make of "Integrated
> 10/100/1000 MB ENET"  or "Integrated 10/100100 MB ENET". (I'm guessing the
> latter was a typo and should be the same as the former). Can anyone offer
> more detail about this? Is this the Intel EtherExpress Pro 100 or similar?

They are Intels. I've a machine right in front of me right now running
RH9 that supports it out of the box. (And yes, I'd venture it's a typo
on that page).

> As for the video card, it would also be useful to have more information.
> The web page says "Intel Extreme Graphics 32MB" and "Open AGP slot NVIDIA
> QUADRO-4 64mb" respectively.

The Intel Extreme Graphics uses the i8xx chipset(s), and RH9 supports
them out of the box as well via the i8[13]0 drivers for XFree86 4.3.0+.
The situation is exactly the same as for the Nvidia Quadro4: 2D works
fine out of the box. You will have to do some tinkering to achieve
acceptable hardware-accelerated 3D performance (binary-only schtuff).

> I see that Debian packages the nvidia driver, and the description
> explicitly mentions the Quadro chipset. I used these drivers once and they
> worked OK, but does anyone have any direct experience with the Quadro
> chipset, specifically how it works with recent 2.4 kernels? Also, has
> anyone any experience of using this with a flat-panel display?

As I stated above, I'm currently using one such similarly-configured
machine to respond to this email. Updated RH9 configuration works
fine -- everything was detected, configured, and up and running within
a blink.

Some tips: 2D clarity with the Nvidia binary-only drivers ("nvidia")
suffers dramatically compared with the stock ("nv") XFree86 4.3.0 one,
so I would stay with nv unless you have a compelling reason to migrate
to nvidia. Currently I'm using a Dell 1901fp flat-panel display at
1280x1024, and it's ... beautiful </wipes tear from eyes>. Crisp. You
will probably have to edit /etc/X11/XF86Config and add "1280x1024" to
the list of modes if you wish to use this res since only up through
1024x768 were configured for this display.

HTH.

-- 
Daniel T. Chen          crimsun at fungus.sh.nu
GPG key:   www.sh.nu/~crimsun/pubkey.gpg.asc
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