Could tthere be an update iso distribution

[James Hubbard]

On 3/16/06, sean <seanlkml at sympatico.ca> wrote:
> Just to be clear, there already is a perfectly good open source
> nvidia driver that should be used by the _vast_ majority of people
> saddled with nvidia hardware.   Only those playing 3d games under
> Linux or driving multiple displays need to even consider the
> proprietary driver.   Way too many people end up installing the
> binary albatross just for everyday desktop use, which is nuts.

There have been times in the past when I have had to use the binary
driver for both ATI and NVIDIA to get reasonable performance from a
JAVA apps that was using OpenMap.  I was not using any OpenGL
libraries.  When looking at top, X was up around 50%-70% utilization. 
After installing the binary drivers for both cards, the X utilization
dropped down to about 20%.  It's been about 1.5 years since this
occurred, so I've not tested the latest 2D drivers with the
application.

I'm in the process of specing out a suite of ~35 notebooks that will
have either Fedora Core or RedHat WS.  I'm not sure how many suites
will end up being purchased. Each laptop needs high performance 3D
capability, since it will be using an appliation that uses OpenGL. 
The requirements for NVIDIA graphics are already in the spec.  OS
isn't yet, because we're waiting to see what happens.  The apps
running under linux will be open source, so its not a big deal to
recompile to fit the environment.  What is a big deal is making sure
that people of lesser skill can install and get the machines setup
correctly.

If someone can suggest a graphics card with reasonable 3D performance,
open source drivers, and can be purchased online at most websites; I'd
be intersted in knowing what it is. I don't believe that it exists
especially for notebooks.

--
James