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In 1997 GNU/Linux distributions were still just something to play at home.

The 1.0.9 kernel released in 1995 was the first to support IDE-ATAPI controllers. Only rich people had SCSI at home.

To get properly working 2D graphics was a black art in itself, let alone 2D accelerated graphics or any kind of 3D support that could rival Graphics Workstations.

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RedHat 5.0 was released in 1997. It was pretty usable, thats pretty much when the university I was at started switching from Sun Xterms to PCs running Linux. There was usable 3D graphics shortly after that.

The only usable 3D graphics that could compete with graphic workstations, were provided by a company that specialized in supporting specific graphic cards.

The company had a name starting by Xi something and I think the cards were still those that you had to pair a 2D with a 3D card.

Yes indeed. But they were cheap... And worked. We had quite a few. I can't remember the name either. Then Nvidia came along.

Here's a chart I found while looking for info about the first video cards I used in the late 90s (couldn't find Diamond on it though, besides a mention of merging with S3...):

http://www.vgamuseum.info/index.php/history-tree

I see IXMICRO and MXIC (Macronix) on there.

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