Re: [gentoo-user] nvidia-drivers vs. nouveau

[Alan McKinnon]

On Wed, 11 Apr 2012 16:36:06 -0500
Canek Peláez Valdés <caneko@×××××.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 4:30 PM, Stefan G. Weichinger
> <lists@×××××.at> wrote:
> > Am 11.04.2012 23:16, schrieb ny6p01@×××××.com:
> >
> >> I use the nouveau drivers because they update themselves when you
> >> update the kernel, and there's less work involved in keeping
> >> everything up to date. But I can't comment on the nvidia drivers
> >> since I've never tried them. Nouveau works well enough for me.
> >
> > See my other reply: Nikos hit the point.
>
> I actually changed to nouveau because the desktop performance of
> nvidia-drivers sucked at the time. I still use nvidia-drivers in my
> media center (because of VDPAU), but in my desktop I changed about
> year and a half ago, and I'm pretty happy with it.
>
> Before that, I used nvidia-drivers for many years, and it was always
> full of ups and downs; some versions worked great, others were barely
> usable. The nouveau drivers have been consistently good, even for
> small 3D use (things like Blender).
>
> If you don't use (modern) games, I highly recommend the nouveau
> drivers. For a modern desktop they work great.

I'll second that. I don't need blazing fast 3D performance, I do need
stable drivers that keep pace with kernel releases. I got tired of
having to remember to fully test nvidia-drivers every time I did a
kernel upgrade so switched to nouveau.

That was the previous laptop. This current one has an ATI card and I
use ati drivers rather than fglrx for the same reason.

The other killer was that I could never get nvidia-drivers to deal with
a multi-monitor setup in any kind of sane fashion. nVidia does do
multi-monitor, it just wants to present it in a way that made no sense
to me at all. Even something as simple as unplugging my desk monitor
and going to a meeting room to do a presentation on the projector
required an X restart.

-- 
Alan McKinnnon
alan.mckinnon@×××××.com