Re: [gentoo-user] Re: State of Radeon drivers

[App Deb]

Nvidia's binary can't be compared to ATI's one. The problems you describe
are ATI-binary specific.

And yes the nvidia binary replaces a lot of Xorg stuff, but after some time
you will realise that this is a good thing, as the Xorg is a mess, breaks
with updates, and introduces bugs with each release. And because developers
know that, they always prepare their software for nvidia, as it is the only
*serious* graphics solution for *nix right now.

Don't get me wrong, I don't even have an nvidia card in my systems right now
(cause ATI are superior in windows, all my systems have ATI), but I miss the
times that I had one. So much more stuff worked without problems and with
better performance.

On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 4:42 PM, BRM <bm_witness@×××××.com> wrote:

> That's great so long as nVidia supports your card. The problem with the
> binary drivers is that they typically only support a percentage of all the
> cards the video maker makes.
> For example, I can't use the ATI binary driver on my laptop since it no
> longer supports the R250 chipset, only their latest 3 or 4 generations of
> cards. So I have to use the OSS driver, which works great with it.
> I have been able to use both the OSS and proprietary drivers on my desktop
> with an nVidia card, but I don't know how much longer that will last.
>
> nVidia's proprietary driver is good namely because it is the same at the
> core as on Windows and Mac, and they wrap it to make it work with the *nix
> kernels. However, they also do a lot of other funky stuff and keep people
> from being able to fully use the full extend of X. Just search this list
> (among others) for xRanderer and other components of X and you'll see the
> full story of nVidia's proprietary driver.
>
> Ben
>
>
> *From:* App Deb <appdebgr@×××××.com>
> *To:* gentoo-user@l.g.o
> *Sent:* Tue, July 27, 2010 5:29:10 AM
> *Subject:* Re: [gentoo-user] Re: State of Radeon drivers
>
> If you are going to use any *nix, nvidia is the best option for years now.
> The nvidia closed source drivers are of professional quality and have great
> performance. Actually they are the *standard* for graphics in *nix, and many
> (professional or not) applications actually support only nvidia.
>
> The ati oss driver is still under development, sometimes it works ok,
> sometimes not, and it is mostly for basic desktop usage and in my opinion it
> is progressing too slow. Anyway, I don't like having a driver that uses 10%
> of my hardware's capabilties. So until it actually reaches 100% (like the
> rest of the linux drivers) I can't recommend ATI on linux and nvidia is the
> way to go.
>
> On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 7:32 PM, Florian Philipp <
> lists@f_philipp.fastmail.net> wrote:
>
>> Am 26.07.2010 01:01, schrieb James:
>> > Florian Philipp <lists <at> f_philipp.fastmail.net> writes:
>> >
>> >
>> >> I have a quick question: I plan to buy a notebook with an ATI Mobility
>> >> Radeon HD 4250. How well would that one work? Can I reasonably expect
>> >> Suspend2Ram, 3d acceleration etc to work stable?
>> >
>> > Well, lots of good information previously posted. Here's a
>> > few more tidbits. When ATI video get's older, there's
>> > always good opensource solutions to keep using it. Nvidia,
>> > sometimes you toss in garbage can, or use vesa or
>> > get lucky? Dunno, as I personally avoid Nvidia; other
>> > insist on Nvidia..... kinda a religious thing with some.....
>> >
>>
>> Hehe, religious is the right word. I remember a situation at my
>> workplace: The admin of our departement IT ordered a Linux workstation
>> with (fully supported) ATI graphics. At the last second he was overruled
>> by the head of our institute's IT in favor of a completely unsupported
>> and more expensive NVidia card. Not only did the poor guy have to wait
>> two more weeks for the shipment to arrive, he was also stuck with the
>> VESA driver for half a year and unstable NVidia drivers ever since.
>>
>> Well, thanks everyone who answered! Problem solved.
>>
>> Florian Philipp
>>
>>
>