ATI Video Cards and Linux: The 3d Experience

In my experience, most users of computers inherit their computer from a friend or simply buy a fully assembled computer.

But, as you might suppose, not all computers are made the same. For example, many of today's games and computer interfaces require higher and higher quality video cards. The video cards in pre-assembled computers are frequently not powerful enough to do much gaming with.

What type of video cards are out there? As with computers overall, there are many different types of video cards. But the two primary makers of video cards are ATI and Nvidia.

Also, most computer users choose Windows for their operating system (OS). For many reasons discussed in a wide array of other articles I've written, I choose Linux whenever possible as my OS rather than Windows. Although many reasons can be listed for this choice, I choose Linux because of it's stability as an OS and because Windows, unlike Linux, is constantly bombarded by various computer viruses and worms and spywares.

Traditonally most Linux users, when using higher power video cards, have used Nvidia cards. This has typically been due to the fact that Nvidia drivers were more accessible than ATI drivers for Linux computers.

Now to the heart of the matter: I have ATI video cards. I have a few of them, actually. The question then became: how to use ATI video cards with my preferred OS, Linux?

I'm happy to say that ATI has heard the cry coming up from the ranks of Linux video card users and has begun to come around. Available today are various "ATI Driver Installers" that can be found at ATI's home page.

With this in mind, I began trying to find the easiest distribution, or type, of Linux to use for my ATI cards. I began with Ubuntu Linux, a very stable distribution. Ubuntu is one of the most popular types of Linux on the market today. It has a great appearance and I've used it successfully with ATI cards in the past.

So, after putting Ubuntu on my new computer, I began running the ATI installer. Didn't go as well as I had hoped. What happens next when the installer doesn't work? Well, as is the case with Linux, you can go deeply into the system and change some of the configuration files.

After fiddling with a file called /etc/X11/xorg.conf, I saw some progress, but still couldn't get the 3d graphical effects that I was looking for. I began to get more and more creative with my configuration of this file, even copying other xorg.conf files and pasting them, installing other drivers and such to see if they would work. Although I probably would have found success with Ubuntu, I began to question whether or not it was my best choice of distributions to use.

Then I remembered PCLinuxOS. I had first used PCLOS (as it is called by it's supporters) when I was trying to get a livecd (an entire operating system that runs completely, stand alone, from a cd) that would work with a USB Wireless. PCLOS was the only Linux distribution that immediately worked with this type of wireless, even without being installed.

So, I checked out the latest version of PCLOS. I downloaded the free cd image then burned it to a cd. I then ran it on my new computer.

Amazing! First of all PCLOS looked great, with it's shiny KDE based desktop. Even without running 3d setup, I knew the sort-of-Window's-ish look of PCLOS would appeal to many Window's converts.

But definitely the best part of PCLOS was the use of graphical interfaces, called gui's, to facilitate system changes. For example, to get my 3d desktop up and running, all I had to do was open the PCLOS Control Center then click on hardware. There it had a video card area that asked whether or not I wanted to use 3d desktop. Yes, yes I did! A couple of clicks later and I had the 3d desktop up and running. This all without having to have anything installed yet!

Then I decided to install PCLinuxOS. They had a great gui for that as well! I clicked on the installer and it easily walked through the steps. The entire install process took only about 20 minutes, complete with reformating the hard drive and installing the new system. After the install was complete, I removed the cd and restarted my system.

Better than expected! When I rebooted the system, my 3d graphics (in this case Beryl desktop) were up and running already, just as it was on the livecd.

For me, the easy answer for ATI drivers and Linux was PCLinuxOS. Although I still love Ubuntu as my overall stable system choice, PCLOS seems to have them beat on ATI driver support.

PCLinuxOS, as with most Linux OS's, is still developing. If you do decide to try out PCLOS, check your version and when the version came out. Fortunately, as with most Linux distributions, PCLOS has a great support community and extensive forum help.

For 3d effects, system stability, and a variety of other great options, give PCLinuxOS a try. For a free opterating system with great ATI driver support, PCLOS is tough to beat.