NVIDIA's Oldest Legacy Driver Will Not Gain New Support

[pmorph]

If I (or perhaps when I) spend enough time with the open source drivers, yeah it can probably be done that way. Of course, it's a simple enable in the kernel away, which is oh-so-difficult. Really, it's very hard, dunno I might hurt a finger.
I had quite a few problems with my initial install of nvidia's drivers on gentoo - the nvidia settings panel still thinks it belongs at another resolution and magnifies itself to be almost unusable (that's about the best description I can give). Updates of course are now an emerge away. The same with fglrx (which I use for the OpenGL 3.x support). Open source drivers I could probably script in to be about the same.
And other than installation time, I've spent more time trying fix nvidia driver problems than fglrx ones - I'm sure others have different experiences, but I haven't.

Yeah, compiling it to kernel is not so bad. I'm just saying that installing a driver from a binary blob is not so bad either. And it works especially well for someone like me, who runs Debian stable with kernel updates few and far between.

[pingufunkybeat]

Is there a similarly simple and systematic (no need to alter the process in any way between driver releases, works for years in a row exactly the same way) and reliable (has never failed and required user to investigate the reason) way to update the open source driver modules? Basically something that could be scripted with a couple of lines of code and then forgotten.

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

On gentoo, you need to compile your own kernel, but other than that, it's "emerge -u @world"

[locovaca]

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

On gentoo, you need to compile your own kernel, but other than that, it's "emerge -u @world"

You obviously missed the "has never failed and required user to investigate the reason" part of his request.

[pingufunkybeat]

How often does apt-get fail for you?

In many years of using Debian, I can't remember a single time.

With Gentoo, the issue is slightly different, but this is due to Gentoo's nature, not the packaging itself. Installing drivers on Gentoo is no more or less complicated than installing anything else.

But if you're convinced that running binaries from third-party sites as root is more convenient than using your distro's package manager, then I won't be able to convince you anyway.

[pingufunkybeat]

And this is my experience the last time I installed the nvidia drivers:

- download the blob
- install the blob
- black screen, no X
- revert to nv, log into X
- open browser
- google
- oh, they dropped support for my card, you need legacy drivers
- google
- find the legacy drivers
- download the blob
- install the blob
- KDE still broken
- oh, sorry, that's a legacy driver, we aren't fixing that
- buy AMD

At the end of the day, both Nvidia and AMD have their blobs, which offer maximum performance if you're willing to put up with them.

With AMD, you have the choice of using a free stack, including X, Mesa, libdrm and the kernel.

It's good that we have this choice.

[locovaca]

And this is my experience the last time I installed the nvidia drivers:

- download the blob
- install the blob
- black screen, no X
- revert to nv, log into X
- open browser
- google
- oh, they dropped support for my card, you need legacy drivers
- google
- find the legacy drivers
- download the blob
- install the blob
- KDE still broken
- oh, sorry, that's a legacy driver, we aren't fixing that
- buy AMD

At the end of the day, both Nvidia and AMD have their blobs, which offer maximum performance if you're willing to put up with them.

With AMD, you have the choice of using a free stack, including X, Mesa, libdrm and the kernel.

It's good that we have this choice.

Ubuntu uses a list of PCI IDs to reference which drivers support what cards when using Jockey. Sounds like you should look into Ubuntu. It would reduce your steps to:

1. Launch Jockey
2. Install Driver for (NVidia || AMD)
3. Reboot

[pingufunkybeat]

Why should I switch to Ubuntu in order run binary blobs, when I can upgrade open source drivers with a one-liner?

My Nvidia laptop died, BTW, and KDE 4 never worked properly on it.

Switching to open source drivers was the best thing ever. I can take some FPS drop for the convenience and code.

[locovaca]

Why should I switch to Ubuntu in order run binary blobs, when I can upgrade open source drivers with a one-liner?

My Nvidia laptop died, BTW, and KDE 4 never worked properly on it.

Switching to open source drivers was the best thing ever. I can take some FPS drop for the convenience and code.

If you choose to complain about the process of installing a blob because you're doing it by hand, and are rejecting distributions which do not require you to do it by hand, then you have nobody to blame but yourself. I suppose you hate butter because you churn butter by hand too?

[pmorph]

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

On gentoo, you need to compile your own kernel, but other than that, it's "emerge -u @world"

Fine, but not so useful in my case, as I like to run Debian stable.

[pingufunkybeat]

That's understandable, but it is kind of the point of Debian stable not to install new version of drivers.

It's not just drivers, you'll have problems installing any recent software.