So a sad thing happened today. I upgraded my archlinux system, and when I rebooted for the new kernel, xorg didn't work.
NVRM: The NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 Ultra GPU installed in this system is
NVRM: supported through the NVIDIA 173.14.xx Legacy drivers. Please
NVRM: visit http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html for more
NVRM: information. The 177.80 NVIDIA driver will ignore
NVRM: this GPU. Continuing probe...
NVRM: No NVIDIA graphics adapter found!
I've known that this was likely going to happen fairly soon, but it's still sad. My graphics card has been moved to legacy.
Nvidia used to have the best linux support. This legacy driver crap, while it makes sense in theory, causes lots of problems. I have a couple older nvidia cards that won't display at 1080p through their DVI port because the legacy driver that supports them doesn't include the mode. The hardware itself is in fact capable of displaying the mode, but the nvidia proprietary legacy driver doesn't support it.
Nvidia needs to smell the roses, and figure out that linux users need and want open sourced, quality drivers. I'm ready to buy only intel on-board graphics in the future, because of intel's phenomenal open source participation and support. I don't really think of intel as a graphics chip company, but yet they are driving the development of X.org. Nvidia is trailing behind, trying to keep up. They are also shooting themselves in the foot by discontinuing cards in their main driver, but not opening the source code for the rest of us. If the source code was available, things would get done, and I wouldn't be stuck with bricks. Come on Nvidia. Grow up a bit and open source your proprietary drivers.