NVIDIA driver *taints* kernel???

[Jonathan Berry]

On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 18:31:31 -0600, Chris Adams <cmadams at hiwaay.net> wrote:
> Once upon a time, Sam Varshavchik <mrsam at courier-mta.com> said:
> > So, boys and girls, here's what you need to do.  Go out and buy a bunch of
> > Radeons.  Make sure to fill out and return the warranty card.  Write
> > clearly that your operating system is Linux.
> 
> Make sure they are Radeons that are supported by the xorg-x11 driver
> first if you want 3D acceleration.  Those are:
[see original email for list]
> Other Radeons will work, but will get no 3d acceleration.
> 
> The good news is that 9200 based OEM boards are relatively cheap (128M
> cards for ~$50 or less on-line).  Good performance and low price are a
> winning combination.

Quite interesting.  Unfortunately, these are all older boards.  I also
own older nVidia boards (GeForce4 MX chips), but at some point, I will
want to upgrade to something new.  With the newer cards, ATi is doing
the same thing as nVidia: they are developing closed source only
drivers for Linux.  The difference is that nVidia provides good Linux
support and their drivers work in most cases, and for the few that
don't right off, they generally provide a fix soon.  ATi, on the other
hand, admits that Linux development is not a priority for them
(someone posted a link to an article (I think it was this list) that
said this; if someone is interested, I can try to find it).

So who supports Linux better?  The company that has open source
drivers for their old boards, but flaky closed-source drivers for new
ones, or the one that provides good closed-source drivers for all
their cards?  I guess that's open to personal interpretation.

It seems if you want decent performance from an inexpensive card, the
ATi Radeon 9200, with open-source 3D drivers, looks like a good deal. 
If you want modern 3D acceleration, though, your going to have to go
with closed-source drivers, and that is where I think nVidia has ATi
beat.  nVidia had 64-bit support out there a long time ago.  ATi is
just now ironing things out completely for 64-bit, and I'm not sure if
it works yet.  I still like nVidia, but people will always have their
brand loyalties : ).

Jonathan