Linux i810 Driver on Mac Mini without Boot Camp?

[Ken Mandelberg]

I've been reading about Linux on the the Intel Mac Mini. Is it true that 
to use the i810 driver (for the i950) that Boot Camp is required?

Dual boot (OSX and Linux) looks much more straight forward without Boot 
Camp.

--

What about Parallels and Vmware running Linux as a virtual machine? I 
presume neither give direct access to the I950 and would not do xvideo 
(or do it poorly).