Yesterday, Oct 1, J.Drews wrote:
I would not get a computer with a nVIDIA card. Here is why:
- While nVIDIA cards do give excellent graphics they tend to screw up other applications like 3D drawings in Star Offices StarDraw. Also, screensavers sometimes malfunction.
I've had a Viper V770 (Riva TNT2) as well as a GeForce2 and run xscreensaver all the time, and have not had this happen to me.
- nVIDIA cards sometimes causes hang on logout.
The only "hang" I ever had was solved with "CTRL-C".
- Certain applications, when run on an nVIDIA card, like Gtulpas and Xmms cause serious crashes.
Was this reported to the maintainer of the respective program? I've never had XMMS crash on me for any reason....ever!
You may not be able to return to your original session after switching to a virtual console.
Certain applications that use anti aliased fonts (GV) do not work properly, if an nVIDIA card is installed.
I'm using AA fonts with no problems at all....
- nVIDIA drivers are not part of the SuSE distribution; you have to download them and install them. A kernel patch is also required.
Right and wrong. SuSE ships a non-3D accelerated version of the driver. If you want 3D, you need to get the ones from nVidia's site. There is no kernel patch required. Big difference between a kernel patch and a kernel module. A kernel module is supplied by nVidia, but that is installed quite simply via rpm.
- The provided software drivers are closed source so their can be no check, by XFree86.org, on whether they will work properly.
True. This is more of a principle issue than anything. Proprietary software will always exist in one form or another. Who you trust to check if it works or not is up to you.
I had a nVIDIA card installed in my computer for 18 months. Whether I installed SuSE, Mandrake or RedHat made no difference. There was always some glitch. If nVIDIA could not provide satisfactory drivers in that 18 month period, they never will. nVIDIA is a serious gamming card. For instance, you can use your nVIDIA card to play video roulette, with Sax2, for hours on end! Video roulette is where you constantly reconfigure XF86Config in an attempt to get the pestiferous nVIDIA to work. Basically, if you like protracted configuration problems then nVIDIA is for you.
I've installed SuSE 7.2 on three different machines each with nVidia cards in them. On each occasion SaX2 found and properly configured the cards with no help from me......aside from me saying that I wanted to enable hardware acceleration. I've spent far more time getting cards installed and configured in Windoze than in Linux. Ken