Sean Gibbins wrote:
> Alasdair Ross wrote:
>
>> This moves me on to another question: How well supported are
>> integrated graphics chips?
>> I'm afraid I know very little about integrated graphics. Am I right
>> in thinking that Intel graphics chips would be relatively well supported?
>> My aim is to run Kubuntu with Beryl and, whilst I will be looking
>> for a laptop with dedicated graphics, the majority seem to use
>> integrated chips.
>>
>
> It comes down to price - low-end lappies tend to go with integrated
> solutions that borrow variable amounts of RAM from the system, high-end
> models tend to offer up branded cards with dedicated memory. If you are
> going for eye candy and/or want to play 'proper' games I would go for
> the latter, or be prepared for at least some degree of disappointment.
>
> IME.
As the message was queued waiting to go it occurred to me that I hadn't
answered the question very well.
To expand on the above, I have never had a laptop that resolutely
wouldn't work with regard to support for an integrated solution. That
said, I believe that beryl/compiz need hardware acceleration that is
unlikely to be all that good, if indeed it is present at all, with the
integrated chipsets. I tried to get beryl working on my work Dell D600
which packs an ATI something-or-other with a lowly 8Mb of memory, and it
would just about run with some features disabled.
This is a good place to size up prospective purchases for compatibility
and ease of installation:
http://www.linux-laptop.net/
Googling for '<laptop> + <distro>' might offer up some insight too.
Think about a good-quality second-hand machine - I sold my Dell i8600
for the price of a new cheap machine at the time - £450 IIRC - and that
had an nVidia card with 128Mb RAM. However, proceed with caution and
don't buy a pig in a poke!
Sean
