I generally build all my machines mostly from discarded junk...
but since I do a bit of photography and use GIMP...I recently decided to
actually go out and buy a new video card..
NVidia GeForce 8400gs.
Since my machines have removable drive kits and I have a box full of
smaller drives, I decided to perform a few test installs:
Fedora 10
Debian Lenny 5
SuSe 11.1
Mandriva 2009
Right "out of the box" the video quality of Debian was outstanding.
Very sharp image even though I generally see some minor degradation due
to using a KVM switch.
Fedora was excellent...if Debian was 100%, I'd say Fedora was perhaps 99%.
Mandriva, though a tiny bit of degradation was noticed...it was as good
or better than the XP installation I have on another drive.
But to Mandriva's credit...the actual NVidia driver was installed by
default!
SuSe did not quite measure up...I could not (easily) get the video
resolution I desired...So I decided to narrow down my evaluation to the
other three distros.
Since in addition to crystal clear video...I also wanted to fine tune
parameters such as gamma.
With the NVidia driver...all such parameters are easily adjusted...
so I went to the Fedora forum...got some help
and by using kmod-nvidia easily got the NVidia driver and kernel
installed! So very high marks for Fedora.
Next I tried for several days to get the NVidia drivers and kernel
installed on Debian...and even with some help...I was not able to figure
out that one.
Then I came up with a nice work-around:
I simply wrote a few simple shell scripts using xgamma
and created a couple of set points.
One for video and one for text...to get my video *exactly* the way I
wanted it. Turned out that doing it that was was better (for me) than
the NVidia control panel.
So now I've done a "final" install of Debian on one drive
and Fedora on the other.
In general...I have to say that the present day Linux distros are of the
highest quality.
Though the debate of Windows vs Linux has been going on for years...
the debate is certainly over now.
Between the *exceedingly* high quality of Linux vs the junk like Vista...
is amazing!
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