Marco Peereboom wrote:
> Yes. NVIDIA refuses to make a useful open source driver. It is barely
> functional and it generally sucks really really bad. Stay away from
> NVIDIA when doing open source.
I'm going to express a very small and highly qualified exception to this
comment...
I have found that OLD nvidia cards (16M-ish ones) work pretty darned
well with the base nv driver for OpenBSD. I'd say "just worked", other
than in a multi-headed config, it goes a bit stupid and tried to run the
monitors at 2048x1600 or similar absurd resolution (which actually, one
of my monitors DID come up in...shocking the heck out of me and probably
the monitor, too).
So, I'm not going to argue the point on new cutting edge stuff, but on
my old junk, the stock, OpenBSD-provided nv works pretty well.
vga1 at pci1 dev 0 function 0 "NVIDIA GeForce2 MX 100" rev 0xb2
"NVIDIA Vanta" rev 0x15 at pci0 dev 14 function 0 not configured
"NVIDIA Vanta" rev 0x15 at pci0 dev 15 function 0 not configured
(one AGP 1280x1024, two PCI 1280x1024, 1600x1200)
I felt this important to mention because when I was originally building
fluffy, my three-headed system, I was looking for NON-nv cards because
of past discussions, and wasn't having much luck finding non-nv PCI cards.
I finally bought a couple junk, unmarked cards, figured, "let's see what
they do", and they came up GREAT..as nvidia cards using the nv driver.
Granted, my usage is fairly basic. The only multi-media anything I have
on this system is xmms. When flipping rapidly between screens, I see
the screen redraw ('specially on my PCI-based 1600x1200 screen), but it
is no big deal. Much bigger problem is moving the mouse from the far
right hand screen to the far left hand screen or visa-versa...and that
is a (dis) function of my cluttered desk, not the video driver. :)
Nick.
