UNC Linux Users Group

[Faheem Mitha <faheem AT email.unc.edu>]

Dear People,

I am writing to ask whether anyone has any Linux experience with either of
the two desktop machines described at

(http://www.unc.edu/cci/index/ccishop/departmental.html)

See http://www.unc.edu/cci/index/ccishop/fullconfiguration.html for more
detail.

Our department is thinking of purchasing a machine for use with Debian.
We're currently thinking about the "technology driven line" one, but I'd
be interested in hearing about the other "general corporate" one too.

Specifically, potential problems seem to be with

a) NIC
b) Video card.

>From the descriptions given, I'm not sure what to make of "Integrated
10/100/1000 MB ENET"  or "Integrated 10/100100 MB ENET". (I'm guessing the
latter was a typo and should be the same as the former). Can anyone offer
more detail about this? Is this the Intel EtherExpress Pro 100 or similar?

As for the video card, it would also be useful to have more information.
The web page says "Intel Extreme Graphics 32MB" and "Open AGP slot NVIDIA
QUADRO-4 64mb" respectively.

As far as the former goes,
http://www.intel.com/solutions/index.htm?iid=Corporate+Header_Solutions
seems to be relevant. However, it seems to be a binary X module + needs
kernel support.

As far as the latter goes, I think Nvidia also has binary drivers. I don't
think the nv driver in X supports this card. Am I correct?

I see that Debian packages the nvidia driver, and the description
explicitly mentions the Quadro chipset. I used these drivers once and they
worked OK, but does anyone have any direct experience with the Quadro
chipset, specifically how it works with recent 2.4 kernels?

Thanks in advance.
                                                             Faheem.