Again: the Nvidia driver does not work with Gnome 3

[Alexander Volovics]

On Sat, Jun 18, 2011 at 05:39:12AM +0000, Mark Eggers wrote:

> On Sat, 18 Jun 2011 00:25:51 +0200, Alexander Volovics wrote:
 
> > I would appreciate hearing from Fed15/Gnome3 users who (maybe) have the
> > same graphics card: Geforce 7300 LE in a Dell Dimension E520 and have
> > also experienced (and maybe solved) this problem.
> > Suggestions on how to solve the problem (if possible) are also welcome.
 
> This is long (as usual).
> My current environment:
> Platform: Upgraded Dell 8200
> CPU:      2.6 GHz P4
> Memory:   1.5 GB
> Video:    7600 GS (overclocked)
> Driver:   275.09.07 (from NVidia)
> Screen:   Samsung SyncMaster 23" DVI at 1680x1050x24
> OS:       Fedora 15
> It's not quite the same card as yours, but close. Unfortunately this is 
> an AGP system, so there may be some differences. I've not included my 
> driver options to enable AGP side band addressing, since that would be 
> pointless for a PCI-e card.
> This works reasonably well for WindowMaker, KDE, and Gnome 3.

Thanks for the long reply.

So evidently you are running Gnome 3 using an AGP 7600 GS with
the Nvidia driver. 7600 GS should not be too different from the 7300 LE
unless the AGP vs PCIe makes a (big) difference.

But I have already wasted more than a few days exploring the problem
so I am not going to use the Nvidia installer to set up the Nvidia driver
to see if that makes a difference (which I doubt).

I installed Fed15/Gnome3 and encountered the irritatingly slow
performance of the nouveau driver and the occasional freezes.
I then used the Rpmfusion kmod and akmod rpms to install the
Nvidia driver. That resulted in the desktop freeze problem.
I googled myself blue in the face to see if anybody had suggested
anything to solve the problem.

When that didn't work I installed Fed15/LXDE and used the Rpmfusion rpms
to install the Nvidia driver. Everything worked perfectly!
To my mind this suggests that Selinux is definitely not involved
(unless there is some Gnome 3 Selinux peculiarity).

To be even more sure I now installed Fed15/KDE and used the Rpmfusion
drivers to install the Nvidia drivers. Again everything worked
perfectly! So I suspect there is some Gnome3/Nvidia conflict.

When the new Nvidia drivers were issued a few days ago I again
installed Fed15/Gnome3 (I don't like KDE very much anyway) to
try the new drivers. No luck again. The same desktop freeze!

I then group installed LXDE from a console screen and shall
continue using LXDE until either a new nouveau driver is available
or I hear of some trick to get Nvidia working with Gnome 3 or
Nvidia issues a new driver that does work with Gnome 3.

Luckily I can taste the forbidden Gnome 3 fruit on my laptop
with Intel graphics.
I am a little bit ambiguous about the taste :-)

Alexander