[vox-tech] NVIDIA drivers

[Jonathan Stickel]

hajhouse wrote:
> I've avoided NVIDIA's video cards like the plague for the last few
> years, because I really dislike the idea of being tied to a proprietary
> driver. Now I am faced with a problem: basically the only
> high-performance video available on laptops is NVIDIA. I know about the
> proprietary binary-only drivers that will provide full 3d acceleration.
> I don't play games but I do use 3d data visualization (not realtime).
> What I would like to know is: if for whatever reason NVIDIA stop
> supporting the Linux drivers, will I be SOL and stuck with an
> unaccelerated card? Or is there a viable Free alternative that will
> provide at least some acceleration? (There is this:
> http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/ --- anyone tried it?) What about
> emulating the GPU in software (assuming a fast dual-core CPU)?
> 

I have been using NVIDIA video cards for awhile now in Linux.  The 
proprietary driver works very well and is the same for all GeForce cards 
since 5000 series.  I think most distributions have good support for the 
drivers as well.  The only drawback, as you mention, is that the driver 
is not open.  However, I think the benefit to risk ratio is high, and 
therefore I continue to use them.