Hello everyone,
I downloaded the Trisquel 4.0 beta a while ago and installed it on a
spare-parts machine that used an ancient integrated SiS graphics chip. It
worked just fine, except in terms of rendering speed - drawing was rather
slow, with a single Youtube video essentially halting the machine. This is
rather a problem when you want to write OpenGL programs.
Recently, I decided to see how using a real graphics card would affect
things, so I tried using a Sapphire ATi Radeon HD 3650 AGP 8x card (with
512MB of DDR2 RAM) that I happened to have lying around. Before I did,
though, I tried installing the gNewSense 3.0 beta to see how it was coming
along. It after installing it successfully and playing about with it for a
while, I put the new card in and then tried to re-install Trisquel 4.0.
The problem is that my monitor now turns off with a "No input signal" message
after selecting any option from the initial CD menu (the one with the
Install/Try without changes/etc options). However, gNewSense 3.0 and Trisquel
3.0 both work fine.
I'm thinking that Trisquel 4.0 must have updated the support for ATi cards
since 3.0, but the new code doesn't expect cards such as mine to be AGP. It's
an unusual card, I'll admit - and, if the official Windows drivers are
anything to go by, it's a rather awkward attempt to fit a PCIe-shaped peg
into an AGP-shaped hole.
So, would the developers be interested in attempting to verify and fix this
(possible) bug in order to increase hardware support? If so, how can I help?
If not, can anyone point me in the direction of a "decent" AGP card with
which to fix up this machine? "Decent" here is defined as "it's not as
terrible as SiS integrated graphics and can do some OpenGL stuff."
Since I'm here, I might as well ask a related question: How well do the
newest Intel integrated graphics chips (such as the Intel Integrated GMA
4500MHD) perform using Free drivers? I've been wanting to learn about shaders
for a while, but currently my only options are MacOSX, Windows, or using
non-free GNU/Linux drivers. I was looking into getting a new laptop anyway,
so any information here would be useful.
Thanks for any responses.
