yes the nv driver is not the best one because the guys couldn't have all the informations from nvidia company... that's why it's good to look after your hardware before to buy it than after ;-)
cheers
juto
no nv is the libre drivers for nvidia... ati I didn't see any project around but I don't use ati cards... I try not to use ati & nvidia and most of my problems are resolved, there are plenty of others video cards with libre drivers support...
i couldn't get the nv driver running on my machine for longer than 2 minutes without graphics problems ... otoh, the nvidia drivers are easy to install, use and rock-solid i don't see any problems with using a closed-source driver, if there is no open source driver available / usable ... it's better than having no driver at all (which unfortunately is far more common in the linux world).
cheers... tim