[NTLUG:Discuss] video card recommendation

[Ralph]

Howdy,
  I'll take that as a vote for nVidia, but I am not sure about your
vote.  I have the nVidia closed source drivers installed on one system.
One of the annoying things about it is that I have to sit and read
another legal agreement in order to install the driver.  The agreement
was not so bad I had to reject it, but it still wasted time out of my
life for very little benefit.  I am a little concerned about what you
say about OpenSolaris here.  I remember a SuSE Pro(or some similar name)
CD that I started to install.  I had to cancel the install and return
the CD because the installer had three unacceptable components that it
would not allow me to skip and had to be installed to proceed.  The only
one I remember by name is Adobe Flash, where the license granted them
the right to come into my home at any time to conduct an audit of the
use of their free program.  I was not about to accept that.
  As far as running Windows, I doubt that is even an option anymore.  I
doubt there are Windows 2000 drivers available for all the pieces of the
system.  Windows 2000 is not well enough supported to rely on it,
either.  I won't allow any newer version of Windows onto my home
network, for many reasons.  I guess I am more of a purist than you are.
I don't really like Windows, anyway and would happily give up some
performance to have a trustworthy system.  So, Windows is out.
 On another topic entirely, I signed up for a free OpenSolaris CD.  I
got a note from Sun saying it had shipped on May 15.  Did y'll send out
a bunch of messages and then forget to actually ship CDs?  I have a Dell
GX260 waiting to have OpenSolaris installed.
  I want to try VirtualBox out.  I have not got Xen to work worth a
hoot.  VMWare Server is OK, but the license makes me uncomfortable.  Ond
it is not open source.  I know something in this space will work out in
the long run.  KVM, maybe.
 Thank you for the response.  You have not ruffled any feathers.  It's
not like you suggested something really daft, like running Microsoft 
Vista.  You were hard to edit, with a lot of good content in your reply.
I always try to cut down the reply to section of my emails to the bare
thoughts.  But, I had to leave more than normal of yours.
Have a good day,
Ralph

On Thu, 2008-06-12 at 14:26 -0500, Bob Netherton wrote:
> > Ralph (the OP) wants to stick with pure open source drivers.  Ideally
> > he wants the new Intel card... but it isn't out :(
> 
> Hey Chris,
> 
> What's the rationale for open source on the driver ?  With a track
> record of free (but closed source) with excellent performance and
> complete functionality (ie accelerated 3D), why would nvidia not
> be a good choice ?  ...
> Just trying to understand.  I'm a pragmatist, not a purist :-)
> 
...
> Not wanting to ruffle any feathers here, but all of the open source
> drivers stink.   You have to get the guys working in the GPUs to
> do the driver work.  There's not enough information published to
> write a good driver.   Most of the time you're better off running
> Windows (where the drivers are the best) and do some sort of
> desktop virtualization like VMware or VirtualBox rather than use
> the open source drivers.
>