It isn't any worse; both suck. The only time that I have used NV was
recently with Alpha 1 and 2. I use the proprietary ones because I use
compositing. When Nouveau matures and has 3D then its use will not be an
issue with me. At present Nouveau does not provide any 3D capabilities such
as desktop effects and compositing. For me this means no Compiz in GNOME or
KDE effects. I don't care much about the cube, etc, but am used to a Mac OSX
style bar at the bottom for launching my frequently used applications, etc.,
and most require compositing. I have long ago abandoned Ubuntu's bottom
panel which is useless in the extreme. There are several non-composited
panels such as Cool Dock, but they butcher the graphics screen. Anything
touching the panel does not refresh quickly enough and you get ghosting text
which makes scrolling web pages hard. (I have a 512 MB card so it is not the
speed of my card and I don't have this issue with AWN or Fancy Panel in KDE
both of which require compositing). I have used desktop effects for years
and to be forced to do without it, even for a time, is frustrating and a
step backwards.

I tried the proprietary drivers with Alpha 1 and 2 and they would not work.
They could be installed but could not be activated, so I was stuck with 2D.
A couple of times I could not get into a GUI at all, so had to work from
terminal to straighten it out. That is all behind me, now. As I said
Canonical has got it right by Alpha 3 and without all of the fuss that
Fedora users must go through. The proprietary Nvidia drivers do not work
well with Fedora 12. You can't shut off Nouveau without editing grub
manually, (even after the proprietary drivers are installed it will default
to Nouveau). If you update the kernel then you have to repeat this process
each time. This is my benchmark for how NOT to do it.

For non-Nvidia users a word of explanation. Drivers for many graphics cards
give desktop effects out of the box, but Nvidia is an exception because
Nvidia does not trust anybody with its secrets. Nouveau involves backwards
engineering compatibility and that takes time. Intel and ATI have released
open source drivers. Nvidia does however work closely with the open source
community and have a good record of being fast to release their proprietary
drivers. It was onlya year ago, (when Jaunty came out) that Nvidia worked
out of the box, but Intel users were stuck without 3D drivers (because
graphics control was switched to the kernel and Intel dithered).

Many distros such as Mandriva and openSuSE provide proprietary drivers out
of the box. This is not the Ubuntu philosophy. Once Nouveau provides 3D then
Ubuntu will catch up in user experience out of the box, except when it comes
to multimedia where it will still lag behind Mint and the previously
mentioned distros. My opinion is that it does not have to be this way. They
could have a totally free distro like GnewSense for those who want it or a
simple check box in the installation process of any of their brands. Of
course if they did this then Mint would have to find a new hook. Isn't it
just Ubuntu without the hassle?