Unfortunately, it's unlikely that there will ever be decent open-source drivers for either nVIDIA or ATi video adapters. Both companies treat the information necessary to write good OSS drivers as proprietary, and believe that releasing it would give up a competitive advantage.
nVIDIA has historically released pretty competent proprietary drivers for Linux. Proprietary ATi drivers are improving, but they still don't support most of the advanced features of current ATi adapters. Accordingly, for Linux users we recommend nVIDIA adapters with proprietary nVIDIA drivers.
My own opinion is that ATi could overtake nVIDIA in terms of Linux drivers in a matter of weeks if they'd just open-source their drivers, but they're almost certainly never going to do that. So, if you prefer not to use proprietary drivers on philosophical grounds, you might just as well use embedded video as spend a lot of money on a high-end nVIDIA or ATi adapter that you won't be able to use to full advantage.
Actually, it's not only a preference on philosophical matters, as much as one of a practical matter: I'm looking for hardware that I can use in other platforms also (e.g., the vanilla Realtek 8139 cards that I have here worked beautifully with Linux on an old PMac box).
Unfortunately, binary-only drivers don't give us this flexibility.
Since I don't play games (and don't need 3D hardware), I'm still eagerly waiting for a review of components that, while not necessarily high-end, work well with open-source only drivers.
Actually, it's not only a preference on philosophical matters, as much as one of a practical matter: I'm looking for hardware that I can use in other platforms also (e.g., the vanilla Realtek 8139 cards that I have here worked beautifully with Linux on an old PMac box).
Unfortunately, binary-only drivers don't give us this flexibility.
Since I don't play games (and don't need 3D hardware), I'm still eagerly waiting for a review of components that, while not necessarily high-end, work well with open-source only drivers.
Thanks for your insight.