Video card detection

[Joel Hammer]

Just a question.

I was throwing out an old computer tonight and was
surprised to see it contained TWO decent video cards,
a voodoo 3dfx and an ati rampage or what not.

I suspect I had the ati card because I seem to recall at
one time the voodoo had driver problems.

I have two cheap lindows boxes with those onboard video
chips, so...

All I did was install the cards in each computer, reboot,
in the Bios in the PCI area put 0 for the onboard graphics
memory, save, switch the cable, and reboot.

The cards were detected on reboot, and seem to require no
further configuration from me.

One of the two machines now plays Doom Legacy fine,
which it couldn't before, so I guess the video card is
better. The other machine, which was damaged in transit,
still won't play Doom. No loss.

This seems to be a great advance over the old days, where:
1. On install you had to pick your driver from a list.
2. Or, if the installation process could install your
card automatically, changing to a new card required some
extra work, running xfconfig and picking out your card,
mouse, etc.

I can recall big problems installing the voodoo card
several years ago.

Is this sort of greatly improved video card detection,
on reboot even, standard with modern linux distros, or
has lindows gone an extra mile for user convenience?

Is this ease of installation due to the fact that these
are old cards (1999 or 2000) and the driver problems with
these chips have been resolved?


Joel