Back in March an announcement came out of NVIDIA as they were getting ready to launch the GeForce GTX 400 "Fermi" graphics cards that they would be dropping support for the xf86-video-nv driver.

While there is now DRM support in the Linux 2.6.33 kernel for the Nouveau driver that carries the bits for kernel mode-setting, 2D (EXA) acceleration, and other fundamental functions on NVIDIA graphics processors, the Gallium3D driver still is incomplete. However, a new Mesa DRI driver has emerged for Nouveau that provides *working* 3D support for older NVIDIA hardware.

Why install this driver?

Your NVIDIA video card will work on your Fedora 11 box without this driver, however if you want to enable the 3D acceleration (if you want to use Compiz Fsuion) you need to install it.
Which driver to use?

The latest nvidia driver: This is a proprietary driver that works with newer nvidia cards.

Prior to launching their next-generation graphics processors, NVIDIA dropped their obfuscated open-source driver and have said they will not provide any open-source support at all for their GeForce GTX 400 "Fermi" series as they just recommended their customers use the X.Org VESA driver until they can install the official binary Linux driver.

This tutorial shows how you can enable Compiz on a Fedora 16 GNOME classic desktop (the system must have a 3D-capable graphics card - I'm using an NVIDIA GeForce 8100 here). With Compiz you can use beautiful 3D effects like wobbly windows or a desktop cube on your desktop. I will use the free nouveau driver in this tutorial instead of the proprietary NVIDIA driver.

A Test Day is planned tomorrow (Thursday 26th) for the Nouveau driver for NVIDIA graphics cards.

The Nouveau driver, the X.Org project designed to provide a open-source NVIDIA graphics driver for Linux with 2D/3D/Video acceleration that's developed by cleanly reverse-engineering NVIDIA's binary driver, is about to get promoted in Ubuntu 10.04 LTS.

This tutorial shows how you can enable Compiz Fusion on a Fedora 15 GNOME desktop (the system must have a 3D-capable graphics card - I'm using an NVIDIA GeForce 8100 here). With Compiz Fusion you can use beautiful 3D effects like wobbly windows or a desktop cube on your desktop. I will use the free nouveau driver in this tutorial instead of the proprietary NVIDIA driver.

This tutorial shows how you can enable Compiz Fusion on a Fedora 14 GNOME desktop (the system must have a 3D-capable graphics card - I'm using an NVIDIA GeForce 8100 here). With Compiz Fusion you can use beautiful 3D effects like wobbly windows or a desktop cube on your desktop. I will use the free nouveau driver in this tutorial instead of the proprietary NVIDIA driver.