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
