[LAU] Advice on hardwware components

[Paul Winkler]

On Thu, May 24, 2007 at 04:27:37PM -0400, Joshua Boyd wrote:
> On Mon, May 21, 2007 at 04:39:31PM +0100, Michael TD Nelson wrote:
> 
> > I have been hoping to find something fanless on eBay UK. I was mainly 
> > hoping to get some reassurance that drivers are ok on modern(ish) ATI 
> > and nVidia cards. I'll keep looking, and wait until a bargain comes along.
> 
> I wouldn't call the opensource drivers OKish for Nvidia.

Depends what's OK for the user. 3d sucks, it's true.  But by default I
start X with the kernel (nv) driver.  For 2d usage -- ie. 99% of what
I do on a daily basis -- it works great.

When I want 3d acceleration, I quit X and restart with the binary
driver.

For people who regularly use 3d, this would be a PITA, but all I use
it for is gaming - and I don't multitask while gaming :)

To make this work, my xorg.conf has two Device sections, which are
referred to by two Screen sections, which in turn are referred to by
two ServerLayout sections.  Then depending on what I want, I can do:

startx -- -layout name_of_layout
or
startx -- -screen name_of_screen

And I can write scripts like:

#!/bin/sh
xinit /home/pw/.Xclients-Quake3 -- -screen quake3

-- 

Paul Winkler
http://www.slinkp.com