Proprietary or open source NVidia drivers?

[Greg Woods]

On Wed, 2010-10-13 at 19:55 +0200, Valent Turkovic wrote:
> I would like to ask any NVidia Fedora users do you use open source or
> proprietary NVidia drivers?

I generally use the proprietary Nvidia drivers.

> 
> Why do you use driver that you use? 

Because it supports capabilities that the nouveau driver does not, in
particular VDPAU. The nouveau support for 3D is also spotty at best (or
was the last time I tried it).

> What
> are the benefits and disadvantages to both of them?

nouveau: it's free software, no restrictions.
nvidia: not free (as in speech) but it works better for my needs and is
at least free (as in lunch).

> If you use proprietary drivers how do you install them? 

I have always downloaded the pkg.run file from Nvidia and run it with
"sh". This does require going outside of the package system every time
there is a kernel update, but I don't have to wait for a third-party
repository to produce an updated package.

My comments are based on my own needs only, YMMV. In particular, since I
use MythTV, I have to have VDPAU in order for playback of HD recordings
to work.

--Greg