[Lazamataz]

Uh oh. Your answer scares me, because the monitor I will be running just happens to be a 29 inch SONY graphics monitor, and I imagine the video chipset might be equally 'offbeat'.

Oy. Will let you know.

[Reweld]

Lazamataz

The monitor is NOT the problem - it's the video card plugged into the motherboard, or the video chipsets built into the motherboards. Basically, any modern PC has a video system that conforms to the basic VGA video specs, and will do graphics at the basic 640x480 screen size and 16 colors. Any higher resolutions and color depths requires software drivers for that specific video card or chipset. The problems I had with Linux was that NONE of my video hardware would do graphics with either version of Linux I bought. I spent many hours swapping video cards between two different PC's and never found a combination that would do graphics with Linux. I piddled around with the command line stuff for a while and then made one box a Windows machine and the other box an OS/2 machine. The only way I would attempt Linux again would be if I could buy a proven, guaranteed Linux box from a store that would give me my money back if it wouldn't do X-Windows or whatever......

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Thanks for posting this, because I want to learn about Linux also.
However , my Graphic card is an ATI Radeon AIW 8500 DV and I suspect it is not on the Linux list.
It appears that ATI isn't writing drivers from what I read on their website.

[altair]

He's right and wrong. All the numbers you need should be in the manuals accompanying the equipment. We've come a long ways in supporting video equipment and except for the latest and greatest Japanese laptop fresh out of Akihabara you should probably be O.K. Pick the newest distribution of whichever flavor of Linux you choose. You can always downgrade certain packages later if they are too unstable, but the latest version of the distro will have the most video support in the installer.