And, in my personal experience, in every case (excepting video cards) where I've had a choice between native OS support and a vendor provided driver, the vendor software is far worse - buggy, ugly, obtrusive, and usually stuffed with multiple "value-added" programs I don't want.
I've had that experience with video cards too, on Linux with an ATI FireGL v5200:
Built-in (open-source) driver: not great performance, but usable.
ATI driver: suspend/resume broken, frequent lockups requiring anything from connecting via SSH from another machine and killing the process to a hard reboot, and finally discontinuation of driver support about a year after the card was off the market (just in time for a version of X requiring new drivers).
I have a new laptop equipped with a FireGL v5700. Last I checked, the open-source drivers didn't provide 3D acceleration, so I suppose ATI's driver is better despite still having the above-mentioned issues.
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And, in my personal experience, in every case (excepting video cards) where I've had a choice between native OS support and a vendor provided driver, the vendor software is far worse - buggy, ugly, obtrusive, and usually stuffed with multiple "value-added" programs I don't want.
I've had that experience with video cards too, on Linux with an ATI FireGL v5200:
Built-in (open-source) driver: not great performance, but usable.
ATI driver: suspend/resume broken, frequent lockups requiring anything from connecting via SSH from another machine and killing the process to a hard reboot, and finally discontinuation of driver support about a year after the card was off the market (just in time for a version of X requiring new drivers).
I have a new laptop equipped with a FireGL v5700. Last I checked, the open-source drivers didn't provide 3D acceleration, so I suppose ATI's driver is better despite still having the above-mentioned issues.