Linux Mint Forums

Hi,

I just installed Elyssa, and now some errors ocured. One is concerning the video output. None of my video players seems to be able to play using opengl. Example: VLC, which usually plays everything, quits immediately after starting if opengl is set in the preferences. But it works with all other settings, like X11 (which is unfortunately quite slow). Other players (Totem for instance, or gnome mplayer) play the sound but nothing else.
I have an ATI radeon 9600 with the unfree driver installed.


Is there a way to improve that?

Edith: There is another very annoying problem which might have a similar background: I installed Google Earth, and this program is now nearly unusable: the world map is flickering at a very high rate.

It is just the crappy ATI driver. Maybe one of the other users will have some tips to help. The first PC I installed Linux on had an ATI card. Every PC I've purchased/built since then has a Nvidia card because of that experience

If you have experiences with Nvidia: could you give me an advice, which card to buy? My ATI card as a reference: It's a ATI 9600 with 64mb, AGP and without a fan. 3d speed isn't of big importance, I mainly want a card which has no fan and uses low energy. And it should be cheap, so I'd buy a used one over Ebay. I wouldn't pay more than say, 30 €. Should have VGA & DVI outputs.
Ok, 3D speed could be nice, but I am satisfied with the speed of the ATI which is relatively slow. Maybe if it is a bit faster than that...

I got the GeForce 7300GT for my daughter's Dell desktop. It was about $80. It is a low end card, but will have twice the juice your ATI currently does. Any Nvidia card will be fine. Just stay away from the 8 and 9 series right now. The Linux driver support for them is still shaky.

Actually there is no 7200GT with AGP available over Ebay in Germany right now. Seems to be mostly PCI/E. Do you know a slightly older card which might be good? Remember, power saving is an important issue, I want to have my computer as noisefree as possible. And the 7200GT already looks a bit to consuming although it has no fan...

Some of the older GeForce 4 and 5 models might be what your looking for. I haven't seen a Nvidia card that didn't work with Linux in the past few years. Just try to find one that suits your needs and it should work.