[kwlug-disc] (Cheap) PCIEx1 dual (triple?) monitor cards, for old HDMI TV?

B.S. bs27975 at yahoo.ca
Thu Oct 29 17:34:45 EDT 2015


Thanks - without your note I would not have thought to look on their site for Linux drivers.

What you say about Zotac holds true for any Nvidia card, not particular to Zotac. Drivers may not be on manufacturer's site, but being Nvidia chips/cards the drivers are always on the Nvidia site. And frequently the manufacturers so refer. Even then this Zotac driver had an auto-update option that pulls from nvidia.

Being a Linux / FOSS environment, it is assumed that the non-proprietary drivers just work. That such an assumption is not always born out is another story. Nouveau gripes abound. Let alone nouveau usually less capable than the proprietary chips themselves, overscan control being but one example. nvidia-settings brings capabilities to the party not present in just xrandr.

Do note though that these appear to still be proprietary, closed source, binary only drivers, FWIW. Don't mistake them for FOSS.
[Mind you, there's a fair bit of clear text in the driver / archive - just not sure if that's 100% true.]

Whether you, like many don't, care or not is a different story. Not looking to argue anything here. There is certainly something to be said for a site having drivers - go here, get this, do that, get on with your day, is always welcome.

Thanks again for your note, wouldn't have thought to look there for drivers without it.

Sadly, the driver doesn't work for me. At least the 340 (346, actually) drivers in the repo understood my monitor and that the TV is also connected to it.

'# ubuntu-drivers devices' helps in figuring out which nvidia packages suit. Perhaps even '# ubuntu-drivers autointall' - but YMMV.
(equivalent to the drivers 'widget' in system-settings.)

And crafting a '# nvidia-settings' line can can be useful. '# nvidia-settings -ldtq CurrentMetaMode' - will get the current mode, to base off of.

>________________________________
> From: CrankyOldBugger
>To: KWLUG discussion <kwlug-disc at kwlug.org> 
>Sent: Monday, October 26, 2015 2:25 PM
>Subject: Re: [kwlug-disc] (Cheap) PCIEx1 dual (triple?) monitor cards, for old HDMI TV?
> 
>
>
>The last time I bought a new video card from Canada Computers (or was it Amazon?) my criteria, besides having 2x DVI ports was the availability of Linux drivers on the manfacturer's website.  At the time Zotac was the clear leader in this regard, particularly for their (Nvidia) GeForce GTX 650.  I don't think this particular card does exactly what you want, but I do recommend the Zotac line, based on my own experiences.





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