Robin Laing wrote: : Sam Varshavchik wrote: : > Dean S. Messing writes: : > : >> : >> Sam Varshavchik: : >> <snip> : >> : If you want hardware-accelerated 3D, yes. Or, you'll have to install : >> : Nvidia's binary blobs. But if you do that, and if afterwards you : >> have : problems with the kernel crashing, you'll have to remove : >> Nvidia's non-free : drivers, and reproduce the problem without them, : >> before anyone will help : you. : >> <snip> : >> : >> Nonsense. : >> : >> I've run nothing but nvidia's binary drivers for the past 5 years : >> under SuSE, Mandrake, and now Fedora and received all kinds of help. : > : > Good for you. : > : > Sadly, not everyone is as fortunate, or as lucky, as you are. A Google : > search will uncover plenty of horror stories of bricked x.org or kernels. : > : > If you take a roll of the dice and it works, great. If not, you're boned. : > : : Pick me, Pick me. : <snip description of Woes with the nvidia driver, xorg.conf rebuids, &c> : This was when I found out that the xorg probing wasn't working properly : on my computer and I had to manually enter all my hardware settings. It : was nothing to find that all my manually entered settings were gone : after an install/upgrade. Ah! Maybe that's why I've never experienced a problem. I always configure xorg.conf "by hand" with a text editor after installation. (I realise that this isn't for everyone.) I usually know the specs of the DF panels I want to drive and configure the file accordingly. I always boot at runlevel 3 and never use the GUIs until after I have a working system. Then, after saving my xorg.conf file, I might dork around to see what they can do. (The current nvidia config GUI is actually pretty nice: lets me adjust rendering tonescale on the fly, for instance.) But I would never depend on it to get the modeline, or the twinview configuration setting right. : I have stuck with the freshrpms version of drivers as they seem to work : with the least headaches in my case. : : As the issue was visible in both nv and the nvidia drivers, I submitted : a bug report but again was made to feel that I didn't know what I was : talking about. I don't know the inner workings of the kernel or xorg : but I did know that my machine was locking up with xorg at +98%. FWIW, : this has happened with an ATI video card using the stock xorg driver on : fc6 as well. Exact same symptoms and strace outputs. In my experience, ATI problems are (have been?) _far_ worse than nVidia's. That may have changed recently with ATI's acquisition by AMD. I don't know. : Again, there was a lot of buck passing. Yep. But there's plenty of help on the linux hardware lists on USENET, on the Dist. lists, and on the Xorg lists if one takes the time to describe the problem carefully. : For Linux to get and maintain growth in the public and commercial eyes, : the developers have to work together to make these issues disappear. It : would be great if all software was opensource but that isn't going to : happen in a world of get rich with IP plans in the works. Some people believe that they shd. get paid for the hard design work they do. There's a great deal more (as I'm sure you know) to IP then "getting rich". It's also about self protection from other rapacious companies, about portfolio negotiation, about protection from your ideas being stolen, and lots of other stuff. : I am going to : look at ATI in the future because of AMD's opening of their drivers. Ok, this answers my question above. I didn't know that AMD had opened their drivers. Good for them! Maybe that will put some good capitalist pressure on nVidia to do the same. Dean
