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#1 2009-07-29 01:14:33

Allamgir
Member
Registered: 2009-06-11
Posts: 168

nv driver has no 3d support: What exactly am I giving up?

I am currently running arch on a system with an nvidia graphics card using the latest proprietary driver, but I would like to know what I would be missing if I used the "nv" driver instead. I know the nv driver has no 3D support, but what exactly does that mean? No Compiz? Pfft. I use XMonad and the most graphic-intensive thing I do is watch YouTube videos. Will I be able to do that with 2D only? What kinds of things does 3D support actually give?


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#2 2009-07-29 01:53:22

lamberss
Member
Registered: 2009-04-11
Posts: 10

Re: nv driver has no 3d support: What exactly am I giving up?

The things that you would lose that come to my mind are compositing, xscreensaver, and some games.

I don't think flash has anything to do with 3d acceleration, but even if it does most flash content (including YouTube) does not use it.  Almost all of my flash watching is done on cards with only 2d support.

You might want to consider using nouveau, which is supposed to replace nv as the default oss driver for nvidia cards (it already has on Fedora and maybe some others).  It has at least some 3d support on at least some cards, so you might be able to still get 3d with your open source driver.  (The relavent packages are "nouveau-drm" and "xf86-video-nouveau", and I think there are git versions in the AUR.)

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#3 2009-07-29 02:21:28

Allamgir
Member
Registered: 2009-06-11
Posts: 168

Re: nv driver has no 3d support: What exactly am I giving up?

Ok. I don't even use compositing since I don't use transparency anywhere, I don't use xscreensaver (I just turn off the display), and I don't play games on Linux. Awesome!

I'll keep an eye on nouveau. It seems a bit too early for everyday use.


The main reason I wanted to know this is that I actually have two graphics cards in my machine, one which uses the nvidia driver and the other which uses the open source intel driver. It would be easier to make a script and switch between these two if both drivers were open source and didn't conflict with each other. Hopefully this works well.

Also, I was considering trying FreeBSD out for everyday desktop usage. I've heard a lot about it and it's just left me confused. The thing I do know is that the proprietary nvidia driver is not supported on amd64, which is a huge shame, but the open source drivers are.

Thanks for your help! I'm off to try the open source drivers... tomorrow.


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