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On the laptop with the Nvidia chip, I've used both Nouveau and the binary-only Nvidia supplied drivers. With Nouveau I get the "not supported" message with Gnome3, and with the binary driver it tries to load the new interface but locks up. Either way I have to do the "gnome-fallback" method. On KDE it loads the desktop fine with either driver, but it's just a slow and choppy interface.
On the desktop it's Intel graphics, for which there are only the open source drivers and Gnome3 is still not supported beyond fallback. On KDE it locks up and sometimes kernel panics before the interface loads. I think that's a KMS thing though; I'm going to try a suggestion I found online when I get back home. Though, I suspect if my Nvidia-based laptop is slow with KDE the desktop may be even worse.
I do appreciate the help, but I've been using GNU/Linux as well as BSD in various incarnations for about 12 years now, on just about any hardware imaginable (including ARM and PPC) so I have a thorough understanding of driver issues. 
I'm having the same issue with intel and KMS. My "solution" has been to stay on kernel 2.6.31, which is rock solid. If you have found another solution, please share it so I can try it as well.





Member since:
2011-03-08
It may not be that your hardware doesn't support it, just that you don't have the right drivers. I own an Acer laptop that has a Nvidia 330m chip in it and if i want to install ANY 3d-compositing environment, (gnome3, unity or otherwise) i have to download the correct drivers from Nvidia's website. I use Arch as my main system and this works fairly well.