ATI, Nvidia, Intel, Matrox, or even those of you using Voodoo graphics cards are going to have either some issues or no issues at all. A majority of these cards may not offer rendering support without the use of what is known as a binary driver. ATI and Nvidia both require binary drivers for accelerated rendering support. Integrated Intel cards, when paired with a wide screen display normally need an extra utility in order to achieve proper resolutions and refresh rates. These options will be explained further in the following subsections.
Further information for video cards can be located on the Ubuntu community documentation site at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Video.
ATI is one of the premier manufacturers of PC video cards. Today's top models are the Radeon series and work by default with a Kubuntu installation. Even though these cards work by default they do not have 3D rendering support. Rendering can be enabled however using what is called a binary driver. This type of driver is not supported by Kubuntu nor the community and is created and made available by ATI. So if you plan on gaming then it will be necessary to install these binary drivers.
Due to the many issues that have been noted when installing the binary drivers, you will have to review some of the following pages and more for more information on installing these drivers.
Nvidia, also a premier manufacturer of video cards, also has a binary driver that is distributed and supported by Nvidia. Neither Kubuntu, nor the community, support the binary driver for Nvidia. There are 2 types of drivers for Nvidia, the regular nvidia-glx binary driver for GeForce 4 and above cards, and the nvidia-glx-legacy for GeForce 3 and below.
Due to the many issues that have been noted when installing the binary drivers, you will have to review some of the following pages for more information on installing these drivers.
Some Intel video cards will require an application in order to achieve the correct resolution and refresh settings. The 915resolution application will fix any resolution issues you may have after installing Kubuntu. Simply install the 915resolution package (see the Adding Applications documentation for installation instructions) and then restart the Kubuntu desktop by pressing Ctrl-Alt-Backspace. Your resolution should now be properly configured.