Nvidia woes

I’m not the type who needs to be on the cutting edge of 3D drivers, I usually just install the packages available for each openSUSE release and stick with those throughout the release cycle.

This time I was kind of looking forward to getting newer drivers for openSUSE 11.1 (due out on December 18), hoping that my FX5500 would then perform on par with, or perhaps even better than, the Intel 945gm on my laptop, when it comes to KDE4.

Instead, to my dismay I discovered that the FX5500 is no longer supported by the latest Nvidia drivers – which means I’m now a second class citizen in the Nvidia world, having to use an outdated, barely maintained (maybe even unmaintained?) driver. To add insult to injury I can’t get the legacy driver to compile on openSUSE 11.1 beta. I expect “they” will manage to provide a package for 11.1 final somehow. But Nvidia are surely not on the top of my list when sending out holiday greetings this year.

Right now I’m diverting as much positive energy and vibrations as I can to the Radeon, RadeonHD and Nouveau developers, and also wishing Intel would sell non-integrated graphics cards. Freedom matters.

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