[Fedora] Re: Nvidia sucks, sucks, sucks !

[Kim Lux]

On Thu, 2006-11-09 at 18:09 -0600, Jonathan Berry wrote:

> > Well, contrary to your argument, the Nvidia drive built under kernel
> > 2835.  The problem was that installing the new kernel killed nvidia from
> > working under kernel 2798.  As far as I am concerned that is a no no.
> > The second issue in all of this is that we have to BUILD drivers in the
> > first place.
> 
> At what point was the old driver "killed"?

>From var/log/nvidia-installer.log

-> There appears to already be a driver installed on your system
(version: 1.0-
   8776).  As part of installing this driver (version: 1.0-9629), the
existing 
   driver will be uninstalled.  Are you sure you want to continue? ('no'
will a
   bort installation) (Answer: Yes)


> > >   If you are running a testing
> > > kernel, it is assumed that you know what you are doing.
> >
> > Well, I've built a few kernels in my day.
> 
> Then why are you complaining, if you know what you are doing?

Because its a pain in the butt and a waste of time.  It would be one
thing if the build worked every time, but about half the time it
doesn't.



> > I understand that, but the real issue is that we should need to depend
> > on a single website to provide nvidia drivers !
> 
> I think you left out a "not"...  What alternative do you propose?

What is the reason why nvidia can't release source to the kernel
people ?

What prevents the OS people from putting a wrapper around the Windows
version of the driver ?

Any chance the NVidia driver could be reverse engineered, especially
since we have examples built for the Linux kernel ?  

I'm not a kernel developer, so please excuse my naivety.

> > > That doesn't seem to be what you were claiming here.  It seems like
> > > you were fine until you upgraded to the testing kernel...
> >
> > Yes, installing the new kernel disabled the nvidia driver for the old
> > kernel.  As far as I know, that happens for ever kernel or at least it
> > has for ever kernel that I have installed for the last two years !
> 
> Installing the new kernel should do nothing to the nvidia driver for
> the old kernel.  Now, if you go installing the nvidia driver for the
> new kernel, that might do something.

It has been my experience that merely running the new kernel will break
the driver for the old kernel.  Like it did this morning.  I don't
understand why.

Question:  why does the old driver have to be uninstalled for the new
driver to be built ?  I'm guessing it doesn't reside in the modules
directory like other kernel modules ?  Even fixing that would be a step
forward.  At least one could step back to old kernels.  


> > First of all, to use a livna driver, you have to know that livna exists
> > and then you have to be able to set livna up as a repository.  Now, take
> > your average computer user and tell me that that it is a reasonable
> > expectation that they are able to to do that.  It isn't.
> 
> Do you think Window's driver model is reasonable? 

The Linux driver model is preferable by far. 

>  For nVidia cards,
> you have to go to nvidia.com and download a driver to install. 

Yes, but you don't have to build them !  The issue is that the drivers
have to be built, because if you look at the errors, that is where they
are occurring.  SELinux gets in the way, the kernel headers have to be
installed, files are missing or renamed in the kernel, gcc is the wrong
version, etc, etc, etc.  

>  I
> don't see that as being unreasonable, and is about what you have to do
> with Livna.

Its different as explained above. 

>   And it doesn't take long on this list to find out about
> Livna.  If you look a little bit, you can find these things out.  

I know about livna, etc.   But just because its a solution does it mean
its reasonable ? 

> Is
> it ideal?  Probably not.  But that's where we are.  Don't like it?
> Don't use Fedora.  Find a distro that ships the nvidia driver.

And which one would that be ?


> > Secondly, livna is not always up and its drivers have not always worked.
> > Then what ?
> 
> You wait and don't update your system.  Or I think there is a way to
> make it not update the kernel if the module is not ready.  Do you
> think your "average computer user" will be doing updates anyway?

Yes !

> > > During the time I used the package from nVidia, it worked most of the
> > > time.
> >
> > Yeah, most of the time.  Great.
> 
> This is Fedora.  It's cutting edge.  Sometimes things break, and those
> things may not be the nvidia driver.  If you are running Fedora, you
> are already taking that chance.  Deal with it.

I don't buy that.  

> > >   The times it did not, I usually found a fix fairly quickly.
> >
> > Just like I did this morning.  How how about my mom, could she find a
> > fix quickly ?
> 
> Are we talking about your mom?

Yeah, that is part of it.  I got my nvidia driver working this morning.
This is a general usability issue. 

> > > Then I switched to the Livna package and have had even fewer issues.
> >
> > Even fewer means some ?
> 
> Fewer means probably none, but just in case I don't remember.
> Certainly I've had to hold off updating my kernel.  I've also rebuild
> the src.rpm for the driver.  Sometimes that didn't work the first
> time.

Yeah. 

> > > The problem, especially when you throw in test kernels, is that the
> > > kernel changes quickly (and Fedora updates to those changes quickly)
> > > and nVidia cannot keep up with those changes.
> >
> > Even test kernels aside, you are telling us you had issues.
> 
> No, I was talking about using nVidia's binary package.  It's not
> always up to date.  But even then, there are usually patches on the
> nvnews.net forum.

Yeah, visit a forum and muck around and then apply patches and compile.
Fun.  Totally unnecessary. 

> You missed my point.  I was talking about Livna.  Why are you singling
> out the nvidia driver when you have happily delt with the NTFS driver?
>  It suffers the same issues with Livna that the nvidia driver does
> that you are complaining about.

Because I haven't had a single issue with the ntfs driver.  Never, none,
zero. 


> > I have never been able to boot into a previous kernel.   As a matter of
> > fact, the installer script goes like this for me:
> >
> > "-> There appears to already be a driver installed on your system
> > (version: 1.0-
> >    8776).  As part of installing this driver (version: 1.0-9629), the
> > existing
> >    driver will be uninstalled.  Are you sure you want to continue? ('no'
> > will a
> >    bort installation) (Answer: Yes)"
> 
> Notice the version numbers.  You cannot have two different versions
> installed.  There is a way to install the same version on multple
> kernels.  Try running the nvidia script with the --help option.  Lots
> of info there.

The issue isn't that it can't be made to do this and that and work in
general.  Because it can.   And I am sure we can all become experts on
installing nvidia drivers.   Its totally unnecessary !  If nvidia would
give the kernel developers some info, we wouldn't have to put up with
these work arounds.  


> And you have been offered several solutions to this issue.  An issue
> is a non-issue when it is solvable with a known solution.  

Well then I guess we would never have  computers in the first place
because the early computers didn't do much more than we could do in our
head !


-- 
Kim Lux,  Diesel Research Inc.