Any Arch users advice on choosing a graphics card..?

[pingufunkybeat]

Much of "this fails" refers to inexperienced users having trouble installing the drivers on unsupported distributions (which may or may not apply to you), or attempting to run nVidia specific software which is designed not to work on ATi cards on ATi cards.

If you absolutely require nVidia-specific software (like WINE) and advanced features such as VDPAU, and don't feel comfortable installing drivers, then nVidia may very well be the better choice for you.

But I don't see this as "proof" that "ATi doesn't care" or "fails". Composited KWin and terminal switching are much better on ATi open drivers than they have ever been on nVidia. This to me is more important than OpenGL4 doing perverted stuff like running Windows games on Linux through a compatibility layer and a large binary Windows driver with an abstraction layer.

For many people, playing Open Source native Linux games and a stable, dependable desktop performance is all that is desired and needed. At this moment, the Open Source ATi drivers are getting to the point where this works excellently. And people like this can (and should) choose the superior hardware at a lower price, lower power consumption, from a friendlier company.

[deanjo]

especially when you know that xvba was there BEFORE vdpau

Depends what you consider at what point it was "released". I wouldn't really consider blob pieces that did nothing at all because of lack of API and documentation (possibly not even working had those been provided) as being "released".

[deanjo]

Much of "this fails" refers to inexperienced users having trouble installing the drivers on unsupported distributions

So openSUSE, Fedora and Ubuntu are unsupported distros?

[pingufunkybeat]

Depends on which version.

[pingufunkybeat]

And I don't particularly like the way Catalyst is picky about where it wants to work, but fortunately the OSS drivers don't have such problems and always work.

And the "doesn't work" threads often start with "I'm using the beta version of the distro and I installed the latest version of XYZ from the experimental repository in bla bla blah...."

[rohcQaH]

And I don't particularly like the way Catalyst is picky about where it wants to work

It's not, but the ATI people are very picky about which distribution they call "supported".

Use any distribution with a maintainer that does a good job at packaging fglrx, and you're set. I don't know if arch fits that definition, though.

[crazycheese]

Much of "this fails" refers to inexperienced users having trouble installing the drivers on unsupported distributions (which may or may not apply to you), or attempting to run nVidia specific software which is designed not to work on ATi cards on ATi cards.

If you absolutely require nVidia-specific software (like WINE) and advanced features such as VDPAU, and don't feel comfortable installing drivers, then nVidia may very well be the better choice for you.

But I don't see this as "proof" that "ATi doesn't care" or "fails". Composited KWin and terminal switching are much better on ATi open drivers than they have ever been on nVidia. This to me is more important than OpenGL4 doing perverted stuff like running Windows games on Linux through a compatibility layer and a large binary Windows driver with an abstraction layer.

For many people, playing Open Source native Linux games and a stable, dependable desktop performance is all that is desired and needed. At this moment, the Open Source ATi drivers are getting to the point where this works excellently. And people like this can (and should) choose the superior hardware at a lower price, lower power consumption, from a friendlier company.

Nice post! =b

[Panix]

So openSUSE, Fedora and Ubuntu are unsupported distros?

Not to mention all the users with ATI cards who run those are 'inexperienced users.'

[pingufunkybeat]

"Much" is not the same as "all".

If you fail at reading such simple English sentences, no wonder that you are failing at installing a driver :P

[pingufunkybeat]

Aren't you the guy who cited an Ubuntu forum thread about a guy having trouble with fglrx as a proof that open drivers do not work?

And used a thread about power management on open drivers as proof that fglrx does not do powersaving?