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  • Re: nouveau on old NV GPUs

    From Bret Busby@21:1/5 to Van Snyder on Wed Jul 3 22:10:01 2024
    On 4/7/24 02:29, Van Snyder wrote:
    On Wed, 2024-07-03 at 08:03 +0000, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:
    Resolve never to buy Nvidia again :)

    1) On my brother's antique Dell Vostro 1700 laptop, the NVidia G68M
    (GeForce 8400M GS) is soldered to the motherboard.

    2)I'm running NVidia in two desktops because my erstwhile SA gave them
    to me when computers were decommissioned. At the time they were a big
    step up. Now NVidia doesn't support them in Debian. What do you
    recommend for them? Multiple monitors. No gaming but an occasional
    video. And some features of the KDE Kinfocenter, especially the System Monitor, either don't work at all, or just make a mess, without a
    graphic accelerator.



    I suggest that (and, this might not be liked on this list) you install
    on one of your computers, alongside Debian, so that you can choose which operating system to boot, Linux Mint (I run Linux Mint Mate), which has
    the drivers for NVIDIA graphics.

    About ten years ago, I bought an Acer Aspire 773G (you might be able to
    find reference to this, in the list archives), and, it had (has) MS
    Windows 8 on it, that I could not use - too difficult.

    It took me 18 months to get the computer going.

    Only two non-MS operating systems had drivers for the CPU; dragonflyBSD,
    and Ubuntu Linux. The CPU is an i7, the name of the architecture of the
    CPU, is something like Haskell.

    Of those two OS's, dragonflyBSD did not have the driver for the NVIDIA
    Optimum, and, the response that I got from the dragonflyBSD mailing
    list, was "Get Stuffed - we will not have drivers for NVIDIA - we are
    not here to provide a usable operating system!"

    Ubuntu Linux was the only non-MS operating system, that had the nouveau
    driver, for the NVIDIA Optimum.

    So, I switched to Ubuntu Linux (I believe that I was using Debian on my computers, up to then).

    And then, Ubuntu Linux went wonky, a couple of years ago, with its
    snapcrap and mandatory fully automated updates, to eliminate usefulness
    and productivity, and other user-hostile stuff, and then I found out
    about Linux Mint, with the release of version 21, which is based on
    Ubuntu, but without the snapcrap and other Ubuntu wonkiness.

    So, Linux Mint has the NVIDIA drivers; both native drivers, and,
    nouveau. I am using the NVIDIA drivers, on my computers.

    I have four of my five computers, that have NVIDIA graphics

    Now, having said that Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu, the more common
    version is based on Ubuntu Linux - see
    https://www.linuxmint.com/
    but, a version of Linux Mint, is available, that is based on Debian - see https://www.linuxmint.com/download_lmde.php

    Whether the LMDE version has the drivers for NVIDIA, I do not know, but,
    I do know that the version that is based on Ubuntu, does have the
    drivers, and, I have been using it with (mostly) no problems.

    ..
    Bret Busby
    Armadale
    West Australia
    (UTC+0800)
    ..............

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  • From Felix Miata@21:1/5 to attempt using NVidia drivers. I thi on Fri Jul 5 01:10:01 2024
    Van Snyder composed on 2024-07-04 13:24 (UTC-0700):

    The solution did indeed allow to install the driver. But.... it removed
    at least KDE, and now it won't enter run level 5. I added
    nouveau.modeset=0 to the "linux" line in grub.cfg, but it's still
    running the nouveau driver, or at least that's what inxi -G reports:

    # inxi -G
    Graphics:
    Device-1: NVIDIA G86M [GeForce 8400M GS] driver: N/A
    Device-2: OmniVision OV2640 Webcam driver: uvcvideo type: USB
    Display: unspecified server: X.org v: 1.21.1.7 with: Xwayland v: 24.1.0 driver: X: loaded: modesetting unloaded: fbdev,vesa dri: nouveau gpu:
    N/A
    API: EGL v: N/A drivers: N/A platforms: N/A
    API: OpenGL Message: GL data unavailable for root.

    inxi -G doesn't report much. For troubleshooting is needed the works: inxi -GSaz,
    to include the kernel command line, to exclude privates, and show everything inxi
    understands about graphics that isn't a privacy concern. If using the version released with Bookworm, you're not getting a complete picture. It's had more defect fixes for G since last year. It's upgradable with its -U switch if you override the override that disables -U in /etc/inxi.conf. The current version is
    about 2 weeks old. If using Bullseye's version, -G is very broken.

    Disabling KMS, denying the loading of the nouveau kernel module, by including nomodeset or nouveau.modeset=0, guarantees neither nouveau display driver nor the
    default display driver modesetting can work, thus leaving you with 1280x1024 or worse, such as no X at all, or even no video at all.

    I tried "apt install kde\*" but it refused, saying "you have held
    broken packages."

    Plasma is demanding. I'm not sure it or SDDM or Wayland can run without KMS enabled, unless a proprietary NVidia driver can be used. Tesla models need not attempt using NVidia drivers. I think the same can be said of Fermis.

    I've been told that Mint includes NVidia drivers, so I'll try that

    Mint is due very soon for a new release based on Ubuntu 24.04. That's unlikely to
    help users of old NVidia GPUs.
    --
    Evolution as taught in public schools is, like religion,
    based on faith, not based on science.

    Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

    Felix Miata

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