Martin Kho wrote:
> FYI: The NVidia driver will probably never get support for [KMS].
Then it will forever lag behind the Free drivers in functionality. KMS is a
core part of the modern X11 experience.
They also readily admit that their GNU/Linux and BSD drivers are just ports
of their Window$ driver, which is a typical characteristic of bad-quality
vendor drivers (even some of the GPL ones, e.g. there's a reason the Ralink-
provided wireless drivers will never make it further than to staging and the
drivers which eventually make it in are from the community project which
rewrites them using the standard wireless stack in the Linux kernel). (It
leads to really poor integration with core GNU/Linux components such as the
Linux kernel and X11, it means they reinvent the wheel and don't benefit
from improvements in the components all other drivers share etc.)
I think the only way to provide support for NVidia hardware in the long run
is the Nouveau driver. They're working on implementing 3D with Gallium3D,
which is the next-generation framework for 3D in all the Free drivers (the
radeon and intel drivers are also being ported to Gallium3D). In the
meantime, I can just recommend to NOT BUY NVidia hardware. (This will
probably remain a good recommendation even when Nouveau will be ready
anyway, as giving money to NVidia promotes their attitude of not releasing
specs to Free Software developers. Both Intel and AMD/ATI released some
specs, only NVidia refused.)
Kevin Kofler
