NVIDIA Drops Xf86-video-nv Support: No Open Source for New Cards
Andy Ritger, NVIDIA manager responsible for the Linux graphics cards, as announced on the X.org mailing list that the graphics chip company will no longer develop the open source 2D video drivers for its chips. He recommends using the VESA X driver instead.
Ritger reports that NVIDIA will continue to support the xf86-video-nv driver for existing GPUs and "within reason" on existing and future X server versions. However, the company will no longer support the driver for future GPUs as of Fermi. NVIDIA will also exclude Displayport in the driver.
The reason the chipmaker gives is that the capabilities of the NV driver are lagging behind X Window System development. According to Ritger, "NVIDIA developed and maintained the xf86-video-nv X driver primarily as a very minimal driver that works 'well enough' to give
users accelerated X rendering from the time they install their Linux distribution until the time they install the [proprietary] NVIDIA driver." "X rendering" in this sense means the X Rendering Extension upon which today's X Window Systems rely heavily.
The NV driver "does not offer much beyond what is provided by the stock VESA X driver." For added value, says Ritger on the xorg-announce mailing list, the NV driver would need a lot of work, which would divert essential NVIDIA resources away from developing their proprietary graphics driver.
He advises Linux users to use the VESA X driver until they can get the proprietary NVIDIA Linux driver. Ritger feels that concentrating on the NVIDIA driver development would be in Linux users' best interest so that NVIDIA graphics functionality is optimized under Linux.
Canonical's Ubuntu project has already taken the NV driver rejection in stride by replacing the driver with the Nouveau driver in Ubuntu 10.04. Other distros are also likely to seek other standard drivers for NVIDIA graphics. A common effort to establish a common driver can only help the free software community.
Do NOT recommend ATI because of this...
Binary blobs and proprietary software are not evil. Certainly not because RMS said so.
Linus himself has said many times he has no issues with proprietary software. Just that, in general, it sucks when held up to open source.
And it's a cold splash of reality to learn nVidia card have the best support in Linux thanks in no small part to the proprietary driver nVidia makes at high quality. Would be nice to see KMS and framebuffer support, however...
Let us also face facts that nv was never an award-winning driver *anyone* liked to use. nVidia described it well as a driver you'd wanna replace.
Nouveau is exciting but years away from being at any level of production value.
As for recommending ATI. No. Just... no. ATI's support for Linux is abysmal. It's probably provided the worst drivers ever developed for the Linux video stack. Even without Catalyst, the OSS drivers are so crappy its a wonder anyone can use an ATI card on Linux.
Re: advocacy
So show them interesting cool apps, show them it runs fast and probably show them that they can run windows apps too VM or wine.
You may have to do some research to find exciting alternatives. And one thing I believe is important is that cool and useful is king not free (as in beer). Free sounds cheap so you need to explain why the world's largest cooperations contribute and give away such great things. I use R and when I promote it I always mention Facebook and Google as big corp users - it gives credit. IBM is a big contributor to OpenoOffice etc.
Just my 2c.
Re: ATI
This is why we need advocacy, and why Linux needs more users!
proprietary driver
ATI