Has anyone played with this?

I've just compiled and installed the latest NVIDIA driver on both the 2.6 and 2.4 kernels, and dear god, it's fucking fast.

Found a few caveats with the driver, though. Apparently, you can either have direct rendering (I.E., use OpenGL) using X, or console.

That's right: use nvidia frame buffering (that's nvidiafb.o, I think) and forget getting direct access using X, "Goodbye, gltron. Hello, tiny console fonts."

Also, make sure that your bios allocates an IRQ to the video output, otherwise Bad Things™ happen. (I've had to fsck more times today than in the last 3 months )

Finally, I'd suggest that you install the drivers available on nvidia's website. (AMD's x86-64 version available here)

Not sure what distro you use, but I generally use Fedora. They have some really awesome RPMS for Fedora at this site http://rpm.livna.org You pretty much just add their servers to your apt sources.list file.

Slackware. I like to get into the guts of my system.

Mwah, I'm a cheater. I love apt-get! Oh and customized distros to fit my needs make me happy too. Yay for Sentinix and IPCOP!!!

elasticwings wrote:Mwah, I'm a cheater. I love apt-get! Oh and customized distros to fit my needs make me happy too. Yay for Sentinix and IPCOP!!!

I have installed Fedora on one of the puters here for the kids but I prefer Red Hat distro, which is running on the main puter here myself... nicer for kernel config to fit my needs and heck I've been with Red now for ummm 10 years I guess..

I generally use Fedora for my desktop as well. It's just when I need something in particular that I use a custom distro. I mean IPCOP is built completely around being a firewall/router from the ground up. And Sentinix is built with Nagios and all its addons with the distro on the cd.

Yeah.. playing ET on and ATI and on Nvidia through Linux is two different worlds. I never realized how much a well written driver and can make a big difference in performance.

elasticwings wrote:I generally use Fedora for my desktop as well. It's just when I need something in particular that I use a custom distro. I mean IPCOP is built completely around being a firewall/router from the ground up. And Sentinix is built with Nagios and all its addons with the distro on the cd.

As far as a firewall/router, if I wanted to use a PC for that, I'd go with openbsd.

I haven't used Debian in a very, very long time (not since way back when it was included in Boot, prior to it becoming Maximum PC.), but I have a box I can spare for it so I might try it out. apt-get looks almost as nice as /usr/ports.

Mmm, I'd go with Ubuntu. It's Debian based and has much more up to date packages. Unless you go with Debian testing, I would guess it has more up to date packages. I still stick with IPCOP for a router OS. I'm sure there is more stuff you can do with openbsd, but I like the whole 10 minutes and your router is up and running with the IPCOP install.

elasticwings wrote:Mmm, I'd go with Ubuntu. It's Debian based and has much more up to date packages. Unless you go with Debian testing, I would guess it has more up to date packages. I still stick with IPCOP for a router OS. I'm sure there is more stuff you can do with openbsd, but I like the whole 10 minutes and your router is up and running with the IPCOP install.

alrighty. between you and 'vader - you for mentioning it, 'vader for putting it in my greasy little hands in the form of a 500mhz machine already running the OS - i've made "the switch"... at least, from slackware to ubuntu/debian-based systems.

what really convinced me, i suppose, was that i got tired of spending 4 hours every time i had to update gcc and glibc. doing it by hand, while very instructive the first time, gets very annoying the 17th, 18th, and 500th time around. especially when you're doing so just to try out a video game.

...synaptic and apt-get didn't hurt, either.

from now on, when i want the hardcore, code-it-yourself-you-dumb-bitch unix experience, i'll shell into my *bsd boxes and have at it.

you two can consider yourselves responsible for sinking a 10 year love-affair with the slacker way of life.

Don't forget, next month is 6.06 of Ubuntu. I'm getting ready to upgrade my workstation, desktop, and laptop next month. Ubuntu kicks ass for desktop use.