Welcome on Mynextlaptop.
This is basically a site of purchasing suggestions: we invite visitors not to buy Nvidia graphic cards, but to prefer Intel and ATI graphic chipsets.
Why?
Because Intel has always given importance to collaboration with Open Source community, not only theorically but releasing Linux drivers for their graphic chipsets as source code, distributed under open licenses. More recently, ATI has too released information about their chipsets, finally enhancing the development of free drivers.
Nvidia instead still distributes its drivers only in binary format, refusing to release sources or at least their graphic cards' detailed hardware specifications, hugely hindering free drivers development.
And what's the difference between "open" and "closed" drivers?
- Stability: if a bug is discovered in an open driver, anyone with the necessary programming skills can fix it quickly and provide the community a working driver. I driver proprietari di ATI and Nvidia drivers instead follow release cycles of months; between a release and the following, the possibility of bug fixing is very low.
- Security: bugs can give problems of stability and working features, but also of security (this is not a theoretical possibility, since some time ago a buggy Nvidia driver was released which allowed the common user to earn superuser privileges), more generally if the user can't have the sourcecode of a program, he shall never know what exactly that program does.
- Integration: drivers evolve, features change, and proprietary drivers have their own timelines, which usually means that Linux users will have to wait months for them enabling a feature already standard in others. It is not just a theoretical point: some examples are GLX/AIGLX, xrandr...
- Continuity: many old cards are no more supported by latest proprietary drivers releases; free drivers grant a longlasting support because they don't respond to convenience decisions of hardware producers.
