I'm building an inexpensive PC that I'll use as a testbed to learn Linux and try different linux distros. I'm starting with an MSI motherboard, MSI PT880 NEO-FSR.

What do you suggest for a decent video graphics card, AGP slot, for a complete Linux newby?

It must run under Linux when the distro is installed. It must run without requiring me to be a Linux expert who can load obscure drivers and recompile kernels and so on.

Once a linux distro is installed and I can see something more than text mode than I'll work through linux tutorials.

I don't need a gaming video card. I'll run games on a Windows box with a very nice Nvidia card.

Thanks in advance.

Newman

Almost any card with an nVidia chipset should get you going, doesn't matter what brand name it is.
And loading and using the nVidia linux driver isn't hard.
Search for it here. There are about 47,764,677,997,325,677,879,868 threads about it already.

A Matrox G400/G450 is fully supported in Linux (no need for non-free binary drivers from the manufacturer) and provides excellent 2D performance. They have been around for a while so you can find them at very affordable prices.


Håkan

I would go with nvidia 5xxx series cards, but for those you should need to know how to install binary Nvidia driver for 3D acceleration to work.
Also you could find old riva TNT/TNT2 ( If you *really* do not want to play games or use something fancy ), maybe old maxtor card would be better (better support, I think), for those the default xfree/xorg drivers will do 3D acceleration.
But thats just my oppinion, if you really want to learn linux you'll pick ATI (ATI has worst support in linux and shitty drivers, in case you don't know ) .

nvidia cards will work in 2D mode out of the box with open source driver. Very easy. It is also relatively easy to install the binary 3D driver if you wish, downloaded from nvidia.com...

Pretty much all video cards are supported it 2D with open source...