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From: James P. Wallen on 8 Apr 2010 17:20
Stephen Powell wrote:
> On Thu, 8 Apr 2010 13:13:22 -0400 (EDT), Bob McGowan wrote:
>> I run Ubuntu on my laptop, because I got tired of the manual Nvidia
>> setup every time the kernel changed.
>
> I have been a regular on this forum for several months now, and I
> know from experience that the topic of the proprietary nvidia driver
> has come up as a topic of frustration many times. I have a couple
> of machines at home with nvidia cards in them, and I plan to do
> some research in this area and publish my findings on a web page,
> assuming that I can find something useful to say.
>
> But first, I've got to get my taxes done!
>

Man, can I sympathize with you two.

I started using Linux about a year-and-a-half ago. Various versions of
Ubuntu worked perfectly well on one notebook, and anything but perfectly
on another. The "other" notebook has an nVidia Quadro 1400 Go display
subsystem on it, and I was using the "restricted" (proprietary) drivers.
Just about every time there was an update to GNOME or Xorg or maybe
something else I would see new glitches on the system with the nVidia
card. No problems on the system with the integrated Inel video.

A year ago I switched to Debian testing and saw the same danged thing on
the system with the nVidia video card. No problems on the system with
the system with the integrated Intel video. I tried Xfce. Same
weirdness, though a little less drastic.

I reinstalled the OS on the "nVidia-capped" (as in handicapped) system,
but this time just used the FOSS drivers. Yeah, it's slow -- especially
desktop compositing. But the system is now as reliable as a train in
countries where trains are reliable instead of messed up like in the U.S.

I'm thinking that, if you want a system with nVidia parts to work well
under Linux, you should stick with the open source drivers. I realize
that I'm making a huge leap with my extrapolation, but I'm not going to
be putting any blobs on my systems any time soon.

I don't even have wireless because I've extended that philosophy all the
way. No contrib, no non-free, no commercial stuff. It has been a really
nice ride since I made that decision.

Regards,
Sam
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