Running Linux, Fourth Edition

Hardware Requirements

As of XFree86 Version 4.2.0, released in January 2002, the video chipsets listed in this section are supported. The documentation included with your video adapter should specify the chipset used. If you are in the market for a new video card, or are buying a new machine that comes with a video card, have the vendor find out exactly what the video card’s make, model, and chipset are. This may require the vendor to call technical support on your behalf; vendors usually will be happy to do this. Many PC hardware vendors will state that the video card is a “standard SVGA card” that “should work” on your system. Explain that your software (mention Linux and XFree86!) does not support all video chipsets and that you must have detailed information.

A good source for finding out whether your graphics board is supported and which X server it needs is http://www.xfree86.org/cardlist.html.

You can also determine your video card chipset by running the SuperProbe program included with the XFree86 distribution. This is covered in more detail later.

The following accelerated and nonaccelerated SVGA chipsets are supported (sorted by manufacturer):

3Dfx

Voodoo Banshee, Voodoo Graphics, Voodoo2, Voodoo3, Voodoo4, Voodoo5

3Dlabs

Permedia series, GLINT series

Alliance

AT24, AT25, AT3D

ARK Logic

ARK1000PV, ARK2000PV, ARK2000MT

ATI

Most Mach32 chips, Mach64 and Rage chips (GX, CX, CT, ET, VT, VT3, GT, RageII+DVD), RagePro (GB, GD, GI, FP, GQ), VT4, Rage IIC (GV, GW, GZ), Rage LT Pro ...