Status on NVidia Support In NetBSD?

[David Chanters <david.chanters%googlemail.com@localhost>]

Hi all,

I have some some research into this in advance of sending this email.
So hopefully some kind souls here can fill in the blanks for me.

I am seriously wanting to switch to NetBSD from Debian Linux for
various reasons.  I really like the idea, philosophy and code of
NetBSD over the other *BSDs (heck, I even ordered my NetBSD mug.  :P).
 But if I read correctly that the "nv" open-source driver is the only
real option currently on NetBSD, then this poses a problem, as I have
used it under Linux already and note that:

* It's really slow in updating the display -- just in terms of moving
windows around the screen.

* It makes watching video almost impossible,

I can only assume these problems exist on NetBSD as well -- they
obviously don't using the binary blob from nvidia.com under Linux --
but despite a petition from 2002 from the NetBSD community, no such
drivers exist fro NetBSD that I am aware of.

So... what, if any, are the alternatives, guys?  The "nv" driver just
isn't cutting it.

I currently have this card:

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G72 [GeForce
7300 SE/7200 GS] (rev a1)

I am unable to swap it out for another, I am stuck with the NVidia chipset.

Any suggestions would be welcome.  There must be other people here
with the same problem --- heck, if the NetBSD-Desktop project is to
also go ahead, surely something like this would be a big deal-breaker
for most people?

I really want to use NetBSD as my desktop OS, so if there's anything I
can do help push this support along, I don't mind.   I am a slight
programmer, so talking code is something I might be able to do.   To
give an example, there is a FreeBSD binary driver released by
nvidia.com --- how much effort would be needed to even *think* about
porting this to NetBSD?   Having never done anything like this before,
where on Earth would one start?

Thanks ever so much in advance for any tips/thoughts you might have!

Oh, and please assume that I would be running modular xorg from pkgsrc
in your replies --- quite why we even *have* XFree86 as part of base
is beyond me!

David