Nvidia driver woes + Mesa

[Peter Bismuti]

>> OpenMotif is the commercial motif and it's free if you are using an
>> open-source OS (ie for Linux in pretty much any case except when youare
>> using the Nvidia binary video drivers which might be borderline).

> I do not understand why you keep trying to convince (ie: scare) others 
> with this FUD, other than I guess you *really* dislike closed source 
> drivers.  I do not believe the OP was interested in a religeous 
> discussion.

We are actually having issues with our Nvidia drivers.  I don't know the 
full details, I thought they were all proprietary, but apparently there are 
"open" and "closed" Nvidia drivers, at leaset for X.org & XFree86?  (They 
won't let XI graphics write one, that really chaps my hide. )

Niether are working for us with Redhat 3.  Each has its own unique problem. 
On my machine, I'm running XFree86 (40300? from xdpyinfo) and I can't get an 
8-bit pseudo-color visual to display from a remote application, while the 
guy next to me can and the only difference seems to be that he is running an 
older X server (40200?  sorry, don't have the details) and possibly a 
slightly older Nvidia card.

We concluded it was an issue with the Nvidia drivers, mainly because there 
had been similar problems.  Are we likely to be correct?  Are there really 
problems with Nvidia drivers?  I don't know if I'm running the "open" or 
"closed".

There seems to be an Nvidia specific implementation of OpenGL and several 
Nvidia extensions, but my gut says to stay away from them as applications 
written using them may not port.  Is this correct?