F12: 30 second freeze when accessing certain panel items ?

[Eli Wapniarski]

On Wednesday 16 December 2009 07:31:14 Kevin Kofler wrote:
> 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

Just my 2cents.

If from the command prompt you run setup then X configuration select the Nouveau driver. Go to the panel that should allow you to configure dual head go through the trouble of configuring it and click on OK. Nothing happens. Not even a crash. Nada, nothing. And this is a bug I absolutely refuse to report. This is a basic QA issue never seeemed to get done cause the problem has been around since at least Fedora 11. While the configuration tool that comes with the proprietary driver just works.

Nouveau doesn't support TV out. As a matter of fact I've tried an older ati card with tv out and I couldn't get tv out in an a tv only setup. Works fine with Nvidia geforce 2. Heck it even works with Vesa drivers. Nouveau not there yet. Maybe somebody could relate their experience with the intel chip set.

I like to play games just as much as the next guy but as everyone seems to be writting out there galium 3d support for the open source drivers is not quite there yet.

And as frustrating and slow as the support has been from NVidia from time to time. They do indeed support Linux and when it works it works.

There is a world of difference between reality and ideology; between the actual and the potential. When the Nouveau drivers are ready I will be using them (I genuinely believe opensource is the superior development model.) Until then I need to use my computer for work and play. I need to get things done. If its a choice between 3/4 there but I can't do what I need to or want it to and 90% there and I can... guess what choice I'm going to make.

Eli

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