Comment 67 for bug 494699

If nvidia are so much better than ATI then where is the kernel-mode-setting support in their driver. Its a small thing but on my laptop using the nvidia driver the bootup (however brief) looks the crap compared to the open source ATI driver on my desktop machine.

ATI seem interested in making the open source driver work. They are providing hardware specs and the development of the open-source ATI driver has been improving in leaps and bounds IMHO.

I have desktop effects working beautifully, the plymouth startup on lucid looks so much better using the open source ATI drivers than it does using the closed nvidia ones. I think the open source drivers are definitely a much better solution and for now the quickest way to absolutely kick-ass drivers designed properly by the open-source community who know the Linux kernel and drivers a lot better than a hardware manufacturer.

The fact that the closed ATI drivers are sub-standard makes me believe even more in the open-source drivers. Let the hardware people make the hardware and the software people make the software. ATI obviously aren't that good at making Linux drivers so it makes a lot of sense for ATI to open the hardware specs and let Linux drivers experts create the drivers.

So for that reason I'm sticking with ATI for the time being and waiting to see what the near future holds, but my experience with open source and Linux thus far tells me that I would rather use open-source that put up with buggy closed software/drivers.