XFree86 supports a wide range of video controllers and monitors.
As of XFree86-2.0, the following SVGA chipsets are
supported
.
Nonaccelerated chipsets: Tseng ET3000, ET4000AX, ET4000/W32; Western Digital/Paradise PVGA1; Western Digital WD90C00, WD90C10, WD90C11, WD90C30; Genoa GVGA; Trident TVGA8800CS, TVGA8900B, TVGA8900C, TVGA8900CL, TVGA9000; ATI 28800-4, 28800-5, 28800-a; NCR 77C22, 77C22E; Cirrus Logic GLGD5420, CLGD5422, CLGD5424, CLGD6205, CLGD6215, CLGD6225, CLGD6235; Compaq AVGA; OAK OTI067, OTI077.
Accelerated chipsets: Cirrus CLGD5426, CLGD5428; Western Digital WD90C31.
These chipsets are all supported in 256 color and monochrome mode with the exception of the ATI and Cirrus chipsets, which are only supported in 256 color mode. Note that the ET4000/W32 is only supported as a ET4000 clone and none of the accelerated functions are used.
The monochrome server also supports generic VGA cards (using 64k of the video memory as a single bank), the Hercules card and the Hyundai HGC-1280.
XFree86-2.0 supports the following accelerated chipsets with separate servers. S3 86C911, 86C924, 86C801, 86C805, 86C928; ATI mach8; ATI mach32; and IBM 8514/a.
No other chipsets are supported; not Weitek P9000, not TIGA, not IIT AGX, not Microfield, etc. Support for some of these will likely be provided in future XFree86 releases. TIGA will never be supported, as it requires licensing materials from TI (and may disallow source distributions); Microfield boards will never be supported, as they use proprietary and undocumented custom microcode interfaces.
Video cards from Diamond have always been problematic. The following is a statement of the XFree86 Core Team concerning graphic cards by Diamond.
``All Diamond cards are not supported by XFree86 even if they have a supported chipset (with the exception of the Cirrus chipsets that have an internal clock generator). The reason for this is that Diamond has changed the mechanism used to select pixel clock frequencies, and will only release programming information under non-disclosure. We are not willing to do this (as it would mean that source cannot be provided). We have had discussions with Diamond over this, and they do not intend to change this policy. Hence we will do nothing to support Diamond products going forward (i.e. don't send us a program to run set their clocks). XFree86 does not support Diamond hardware. It is possible to make some of it work, but we will not assist in doing this.''
Local bus cards are supported as well. The suggested setup for XFree86 under Linux is a 486 machine with at least 8 megabytes of RAM, and an ET4000 VESA local bus video card. This is the ``generic'' setup which is known to work and is quite fast. Of course, you must also have a VESA local bus motherboard in order to use the local bus video card. I have run XFree86 on a 486/50 MHz machine with 8 megs of RAM, and it's as fast or faster than many color workstations running proprietary versions of UNIX and X.
You will need at least 4 megabytes of physical RAM, and 16 megabytes of virtual RAM (for example, 8 megs physical and 8 megs swap). Remember that physical RAM is speed! A system with 4 megabytes of physical RAM will run much (up to 10 times) more slowly than one with 8 megs or more. Furthermore, swapping is too slow to compensate for lack of physical RAM. It is strongly suggested that you have at least 8 megs of physical RAM.