Nouveau For A $10 NVIDIA Graphics Card?
The PCB on this XFX GeForce 9600GSO is quite bare and its layout is derived from a higher-end GeForce PCB that can accommodate greater video memory and other capabilities.
With the GeForce 9600GSO being a few generations old (thus not Fermi-based), it's already supported under the open-source Nouveau driver stack -- to the same level as other GeForce 9 series hardware. This includes KMS, 2D EXA, and 3D/OpenGL acceleration over Gallium3D. Right now in Mesa Git only the Fermi generation hardware is advertising GL Shading Language 1.30 compliance, although the GeForce 9 series is OpenGL 3.0 / GLSL 1.30-capable, but hopefully that support will be finished up soon. The only video acceleration for this graphics card in the Nouveau driver stack is using shaders with Gallium3D's VDPAU/XvMC/VA-API state tracker projects, which are still a work-in-progress. The best video playback experience under Linux is still using VDPAU with the binary Linux graphics driver.