With 9.1, I haven't had any problem with the Nvidia drivers, but my cards are all at least a year old, so I can't guarantee what happens with the newest hardware. I've been using the proprietary Nvidia drivers for a couple of years now, with cards from the old TNT to GeForce (depending on which machine I'm using) and they've been trouble-free. Proprietary or not, Nvidia seems to have their act together with Linux support, and the installation has gotten easier over time (now it's just a .run, unless you are installing under SuSe, and then you need to jump through some relatively simple steps).
I truly believe that we Linux users should buy our hardware from companies that go the extra step to fully support our systems, even if the support is in a proprietary format.
I agree in general, though I wouldn't pass over a better product in favour of a less good one just because the latter provided Linux drivers. You also need to bear in mind that some companies who do not provide Linux drivers also support Linux by adopting a cooperative attitude to developers who want to write Open Source drivers.
This said, Nvidia have a pretty good record. I've been using their cards for a few years (first GeForce II, now GeForce IV) and have been very happy with them. I've used the XFree86 drivers (which are fine if you don't want hardware acceleration), the download from Nvidia and, briefly an RPM from either Texstar or PLF. There should be no problems so long as you follow the instructions in the README (older versions had some problems with conflicts with stale OpenGL symlinks, but I haven't noticed that recently).
Sir Robin
-- "Certitude is possible for those who only own one encyclopedia." - Robert Anton Wilson
Robin Turner IDMYO Bilkent Univeritesi Ankara 06533 Turkey
www.bilkent.edu.tr/~robin
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