RE: Kernel 2.6.5 and Nvidia driver
I have been running almost exclusively NVidia for quite some time. The only board I have ever had any problems with the proprietary NVIDIA drivers on a are the ASUS nforce boards *which specifically state* not to use the NVidia drivers. There is some kind of incompatability with the AGP port, and to be honest I haven't given it a lot of effort beyond BIOS tweaking since the nv driver was fine for that application... speaking of which,
How is the ATI xfree driver any better than the NV xfree driver? They both seem to work about the same for me. I like the NVIDIA proprietary driver on my laptops because I get advanced features like TwinView, which I use *all the time* without ANY problems what-so-ever. Also, I have run the NVIDIA proprietary drivers on many different systems, RH 7.0,7.3,8.0,9.0/Gentoo-non-specific-always-updating-in-a-nasty-bleeding-edge-kindof-way/and Debian Sarge,Sid. I've used kernel versions 2.4.18/22/23/25 and 2.6.1/3, all without ANY problems, save the ASUS board above. I use VMWare every single day running several different OSs and on most of the above types from time to time, including in full screen mode, and the NVIDIA board/driver handles it all quite easily.
I'm not trying to start a flame war on how Companies should choose to or not to support open source projects, but since I use their product a LOT and I have had dramatically different experience from what is being portrayed I figured I should give the counter point. In fairness, I have not even attempted to try and get an ATI board to provide the advanced services that I get out of the NVIDIA drivers. That is most likely because I'm a lazy bastard and if someone like NVIDIA has excellent documentation and their product works - even when they say it might not because they haven't tested it in that environment - and I would have to hunt for docs on another product and hope they are up-to-date, I probably won't bother.
Cheers.
--JATF
-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Johnson [mailto:baloo@ursine.ca]
Sent: Tuesday, April 06, 2004 1:39 PM
To: Frédéric Dreier
Cc: Steve Freitas; Gokul Poduval; Debian Users
Subject: Re: Kernel 2.6.5 and Nvidia driver
Frédéric Dreier <frederic.dreier@uptime.ch> writes:
> Paul Johnson wrote:
>
>>Steve Freitas <steve@newportit.com> writes:
>>
>>>>How is ATI support better than Nvidia ? As far as I know, both provide
>>>>binary drivers, and nvidia was at this game much earlier than ati.
>>>>
>>> I had nothing but bad experience with Nvidia's binary drivers. They
>>> kept locking up my machine completely. The open-source alternative,
>>> XFree86's nv driver, is completely pathetic. The XFree86 Radeon
>>> driver, on the other hand, has performed so beautifully for me that
>>> I never felt the need to try their binary driver. YMMV.
>>
>>Steve Freitas is now my definition for typical case for an nVidia user
>>these days.
>>
> Actually I have more 'diffcult' experience with ATI than nvidia... the
> last time I checked, framebuffer still hangs when I switch from X to
> consoles with my ATI 9700.
Your point? Even Linus tells people not to use framebuffer for
anything unless they have to.
--
Paul Johnson
<baloo@ursine.ca>
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