The abrupt merging of Nouveau [LWN.net]

The abrupt merging of Nouveau

Posted Dec 16, 2009 9:10 UTC (Wed) by niner (subscriber, #26151)
In reply to: The abrupt merging of Nouveau by Banis
Parent article: The abrupt merging of Nouveau

If NVidia's drivers are so great, then why can't they even get 2d graphics
to work at acceptable speed? I switched my desktop from NVidia to ATI this
year, because I just could not bear the slowness any longer. Being able to
watch konsole printing a screen full of text for half a second boosts your
working performance immensely. I also liked especially how they removed
video acceleration with the GeForce 6xxx line without giving a proper
replacement in the driver. Chances of getting HD videos to work are 0 when
the X server takes > 60% CPU time to get the fully rendered image to the
screen.

So now I switched to an ATI/AMD card with free radeon drivers and finally,
even in 2009 I can scroll in vim without waiting for ages for the screen
to redraw and even HD video works fluidly. Basics that actually work!
Who'd have thought?

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The abrupt merging of Nouveau

Posted Dec 16, 2009 11:12 UTC (Wed) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]

Or maybe you could have just fixed whatever is broken in your setup?

It must be obvious that such problems are not normal, or nobody would be able to use that hardware.
Are you sure you weren't using the nv driver?

The abrupt merging of Nouveau

Posted Dec 16, 2009 11:42 UTC (Wed) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link]

I am sure.

Both problems were acknowledged and conscious decisions by the developers.
For both the answer was: buy a new graphics card from the 8xxx series.
There the drivers do accelerate video and anti aliased fonts.

Well I did not. I bought hardware (Radeon HD 4870) that at least has some
usable support by free drivers which in both regards surpass both NVidia's
and AMD's proprietary offers.