On Tue, 2006-07-04 at 18:40 -0500, Jeff Vian wrote:
> Just because _you_ happen to have a bad day with a certain package
> does not mean everyone does.
But neither does it mean that I'm the only one. I was, quite obviously,
responding to someone else having trouble with it. Having learned my
lesson the hard way (Not one, but FOUR gradually degrading and
eventually trashed installs of FC5 _plus_ a FIFTH I managed to save only
by the skin of my teeth, whereupon I was enlightened and removed
kmod_nvidia. No more problem.) I thought a cautionary note might be in
order.
> I have never had any problems in using the nvidia driver, and I would
> wager that I stress it similarly if not more than you do.
Doubtful. More likely you stress it _way_ more. I don't stress it at
ALL. the only reason I installed it was to :
A> improve normal 2D redraw speed (hopefully),
B> to make the blinky lights look prettier (OpenGL screensavers,
whoopie-doo.). And lastly,
C> It was /there/. and I'm a hacker. Need I say more? :D
> Additionally you are the only one I have seen post with this kind of
> trouble, so I have to assume you are in the vanishingly small minority
> with this type of gripe.
Assuming would be a bad idea. You won't see many posts to redhat's
bugzilla OR this list about this, as it's not their package.. they have
no responsibility towards it. Those who do post, get swiftly
'straightened' and pointed to nvidia, wherefrom the problem stems.
> Please keep this list civil and quit berating a manufacturer for
> attempting to help.
Nowhere in this discussion have I seen "nvidia attempting to help" -- in
point of fact, in the experience of others, which I have witnessed
second and third hand, user bug reports get largely ignored in the
general scheme of things. It's only the large corporate customers whose
bugs get fixed in anything resembling a timely fashion. I'd love to see
that change, but, that'll happen right around the time it goes
open-source. :-P
And speaking of which,
> Yes, it would be nice if their driver were open source,
Yes it would be. Oh well.
> but that does not mean it does not work for most who use it.
Doesn't mean that it *does* either. "should work" != "does work"
Bear in mind, my probles were not instantaneous upon install... It
*seemed* to work fine for me for months at a stretch, each time I
reinstalled the system from scratch (five times total, did I mention
that?) and performance never slackened on the graphics, themselves..
*That part was fine*!
It's only the REST of the system that suffered because of it.
o Horribly corrupted rpm databases? Huh?
o Trashed swap partition (how the HELL did that happen?)
o Perms on /etc/rc.d/ and /etc/rc.d/init.d/ suddenly being 0644
instead of 0755 (explain that one, if you can) ..
o memory errors on DRAM that's passed memtest86 running all night (at
least 10 full test-suites, if not more), 100% cleanly?
All sorts of 'general weirdness' that crept in gradually over _months_,
each re-install eventually resulting in different problems (some of
which I've casually grouped together above, but none of these occurred
during the same install. Each install was the eventual result of one of
the above (plus a few others) after I noticed it and did my careful best
to correct and preserve a system that I use on a daily basis.)
If you saw this:
http://phpfi.com/125284
Would the video drivers be the first place (or the second? the fourth?
top ten?) you looked for the culprit? No? funny thing, *neither would
I*... nevertheless nvidia was indeed the source of this and other
strange problems. And that's the *only* time out of the five that I got
anything conclusive recorded as far as error messages that indicated
*something* was horribly wrong (_before_ things *went* completely
wahooni-shaped forcing a reinstall), and led me to a real, practical,
restored to full functionality, solution.
So please, spare me. If it works for you, great. I'm happy for you.
_Proceed with caution_. That road, however well-traveled, is not
well-paved.
'nuff said.
Have a nice day,
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