Re: [gnome-love] Gnome 3.x HCL question

[Emmanuele Bassi <ebassi gmail com>]

hi;

On 2 February 2012 18:18, bsquared <bwcode4u gmail com> wrote:

> Is there an HCL for Gnome 3.x.  My video card doesn't want to play
> nice with gnome-shell.  I would like to get an inexpensive compatible
> replacement, but cannot find a list of cards / chipsets specific to
> Gnome 3.

creating a HCL for graphics card support is not entirely a trivial
matter. I can't just tell you "but $BRAND" because in reality there's
a complex, and largely intertwined set of requirements at play:

  http://wiki.clutter-project.org/wiki/FrequentlyAskedQuestions

in general, what you want is:

  - a GPU that has OpenGL 1.4+ support (or DirectX 9+);
  - a GPU supported by open source drivers in Mesa

this generally covers a lot of AMD/ATi discrete cards, and most Intel
integrated graphics architectures. nVidia discrete cards supported
through the nouveau reverse engineered driver are also an option, but
it's more hit and miss, and the driver may regress. while for Intel
GPUs you *really* want the latest and greatest (mostly because older
chipsets are pretty dire), with AMD/ATi and nVidia you should get
something that is not bleeding gaming edge, as the authors of the
drivers don't have infinite resources for tracking the newish GPUs
*and* fixing bugs in the old ones.

for AMD/ATi and nVidia, the closed source drivers may be an option -
but it generally has to be the latest version, and it's not guaranteed
to be working; we tend to expose bugs in the Linux support because the
Shell is not a primary target for them (i.e. it's not a game, and
Linux is not a sizeable market to devote many resources to).

you can avoid crap like Matrox, VIA Unichrome, SiS, or other cheap
integrated stuff. not only the GPU is a joke, the driver support is
ridoncolous.

hope this helps.

ciao,
 Emmanuele.

-- 
W: http://www.emmanuelebassi.name
B: http://blogs.gnome.org/ebassi/