[vox-tech] NVIDIA drivers

[Dylan Beaudette]

On Monday 04 June 2007 12:31, Henry House wrote:
> > >>>>> "h" == hajhouse  <hajhouse at houseag.com> writes:
> >
> > h> I've avoided NVIDIA's video cards like the plague for the last few
> > h> years, because I really dislike the idea of being tied to a
> > proprietary h> driver.
> >
> > Well, I've been down this road many times in the past.  I've had both
> > nvidia and ati cards at various times...  At least nvidia *offers* a
> > driver!
> >
> > In the end, when I've tried the OSS vs proprietary drivers the
> > proprietary ones are *always* better when it comes to 3D
> > acceleration.  I've used both, but it's always something like Google
> > Earth that makes me go switch to NVidia's.
> >
> > For Fedora, both the atrms and the livna repositories distributes the
> > pre-compiled drivers so a yum update should grab them.  (Yes, I
> > realize I'm speaking to a largely Debian crowd).
> >
> > The biggest problem with the commercial drivers is that at some point
> > their installation system drops support for older cards and you have
> > to make sure you start grabbing the backwards-compatibility snapshot
> > instead (again, the rpm repositories above distributes compat versions
> > too).
>
> Thanks all for your comments on the usability of the proprietary
> drivers. However, that's not really what I was asking. I know that the
> proprietary drivers work (at least with current kernels); I am
> specifically interested in alternatives that I may be forced to used in
> the unfortunate event that NVidia stops supporting the CPU/kernel/OS
> combination I want to use before I retire the computer.

ah, there is the 'nv' driver which works ok...

-- 
Dylan Beaudette
Soils and Biogeochemistry Graduate Group
University of California at Davis
530.754.7341