nvidia

[Robin Laing]

Karl Larsen wrote:
>    You might have a nvidia video card on your motherboard. There are two 
> choices here. Try to use the nvidia or turn it off and plug in your old 
> known video card. Today I wish I had done the latter because using 
> nvidia with f7 is a pain.
> 
>    I really do not see a new Linux user ever getting his/her computer 
> working with nvidia. You need to go to the nvidia web page and get a 
> tarball and install it, not a new person's thing, or you can get 4 rpm 
> files and learn to use --nodeps at the proper time.
> 
>    Hoping that the updates would by now have some nvidia help, after 
> getting 236 updates last night on my f7-64 bit system it did not fix the 
> problem. I used the 4 rpm files from www.atrpms.net which worked but 
> maybe not well. I heard from Ric Moore that the tarball is the way to 
> go. I will try that on f8.
> 
>    A bug I keep forgetting to file is the following. A really bad 
> problem with nvidia is the missing pointer when X windows boots up. You 
> can do nothing! This is fixed by edit of the /etc/X11/xrog.conf file 
> adding you want to use a software pointer.
> 
>    But this will not work if grub.conf has a kernel directive to use 
> rhxxx which hides the boot up output. While that standard kernel 
> directive exists you can not get a pointer period.
> 
>    This bug makes f7 and I expect f8 useless to a new user with nvidia.
> 
> 

I have read through the thread and decided that a single response is 
better than a dozen little responses.

I have used Nvidia since almost 2 months of fighting with ATI's driver a 
few years ago.  I had no issues with Nvidia until I installed F7.  Well, 
it wasn't the install but a kernel upgrade later when the problems 
started.  I tried the Livna, Freshrpms and Nvidia versions of the same 
driver.  All caused the same issues.  None worked.

I knew my card was slower so I changed it.  Surprise, the drivers 
worked.  I now use the freshrpms due to dkms support.  Better than 
having to re-make the Nvidia drivers or remove and upgrade the Livna 
drivers.

Now I don't put the blame on Nvidia as many in this thread have.  I 
don't blame Fedora/RedHat, I blame the US government for allowing 
Software patents.  This is where the issue stems from.  No software 
patents, then no patent issues.  Of course there is still copyright 
issues but that is another matter.

AMD/ATI merger is going to be good for OSS, as long as AMD releases 
decent drivers.  Now the other end of this is it may force Nvidia to 
release OSS drivers.

While I was having problems, and the problem extended to the nv driver 
as well, I submitted bugs to both Nvidia and RedHat.  At least Nvidia 
took the time to respond with some suggestions.  RedHat just told me to 
take a hike as they had nothing to do with the closed source drivers. 
Even after submitting stack traces of the issues for the nv driver that 
were the same as the binary driver. 


FWIW, in some recent kernels, I have had the same issue with an ATI card 
on FC6 that I have under F7.  System freezes and Xorg running 95% of the 
processor.  I don't point my finger to Nvidia but to the Kernel 
developers that have made a change.  On the Nvidia forums for the 
problem (freezing) that I had, someone installed a custom kernel and 
fixed all their driver problems.

I do agree that if we want to get people converted from Windows to 
Linux, we have to get it working out of the box, not with two days of 
searching Google and hopefully fixing their issues.

I have two working machines that use Nvidia graphics and no issues lately.

 From what I understand, the Nvidia driver requires more changes than 
just the addition of a module to the OS.  I understand it changes some 
other files if you use the binary blob.  I used the Livna rpms for ages 
but in F7, I find that the freshrpms is much nicer.  No removing and 
re-installing the driver.

I think that the Fedora staff have to be willing to look at a closed 
source driver issue and submit a bug report up-stream in behalf of their 
users.

As for video card issues.  I know a Windows user that last year dumped 
all ATI video cards due to driver issues.  And Vista had major headaches 
with drivers.  So the driver issue isn't just Linux.  In the Windows 
world, Microsoft will throw money at the problem.

Maybe we can ask this group to get involved.


  Know Any Hardware Needing Better Linux Support?
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/28/0233231


-- 
Robin Laing