nv drivers (was Re: nv driver and gnome broken)

[Adam Jackson]

On Thu, 2008-01-24 at 22:10 +1100, Rodd Clarkson wrote:
> On Wed, 2008-01-23 at 09:09 -0800, David Mack wrote:
> > In the latest rawhide update, the nv driver
> > (xorg-x11-drv-nv-2.1.6-6.fc9) kills the X server. The nouveau driver
> > works.
> 
> I'm keen to test rawhide but since I've got a nvidia card I'm a little
> nervous about the past performance of the nv and nouveau drivers.
> 
> How are they working in the current rawhide (with the exception of this
> bug of course).

This bug affected nv only.  nouveau was not affected.

Broadly speaking the nouveau driver is widely reported to have equal or
better 2D performance than nv, occasionally even on par with nvidia.

> Does the nv driver resume after a suspend.

Only if you're lucky.  There are deep issues with the nv resume path;
essentially VBE doesn't work reliably after suspend, so the only way to
reinit the card is to execute the nvidia equivalent of what ATI calls
ATOMBIOS.  The nouveau driver contains a start towards implementing
this, but it's not done.  I don't know if anyone is owning that feature,
it would certainly be a welcome area for contribution.

>   Does nouveau support enough 3D to run compiz?

Maybe.  Certainly not in Fedora as shipped, we're not shipping the 3D
part of the driver yet due to immaturity (of the driver, not of the
developers).

- ajax