Re: xserver-xorg vs. xserver-xorg-video-nouveau
Camaleón <noelamac@gmail.com> writes:
> On Wed, 01 Feb 2012 20:28:55 +0000, lee wrote:
>
>> Camaleón <noelamac@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> having to deal with the mess of installing a VGA card in linux. It
>>> never has been so difficult and so hard than now is (or at least I
>>> don't remember it was when no KMS and no dynamic Xorg existed).
>>
>> Hum, did you ever try to get X11 to work with an ATI mach32 or mach64
>> or, later, a Matrox G200, about 15 years ago?
>
> My first linux box (SuSE Linux 8.2) was installed on a Matrox G450, IIRC.
> I had to do nothing, it worked out of the box. Maybe I was just lucky.
>
> Afterwards, I have installed over nvidia (mostly in workstations), ATI
> (in servers) and Intel (netbooks).
You must have been really lucky then :)
>> Remember your huge 14 or 15" CRT monitor flickering and possibly being
>> damaged when you got the frequencies too high in your xf86config while
>> trying to get a less flickery image in an unbelieveably high 1024x768
>> resolution?
>
> Nope, maybe because my displays were well supported (Sony) :-)
>
>> And remember trying to figure out modelines?
>
> Nope, in fact I've only had to deal with that at the time Xorg became
> dynamic but not before (openSUSE had a very nice tool to configure this
> called "SaX").
Yeah, there were some tools to calculate modelines ... Fortunately, I
got away with specifying the frequencies.
>> Nowadays, you don´t really need to do anything ...
>
> No? Nothing? Really? I mean, really?
You are very likely to end up with a graphical display because all the
drivers are (needlessly) installed through dependencies, and which one
is used is being figured out automatically. That doesn´t mean that your
display is optimally configured.
> You do have to do many things now that were not needed in the old days.
> For instance, try to install the closed source nvidia driver while having
> nuvó installed.
Just put nuveau into /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.
> In the old times, editing one line at xorg.conf was all
> to get the driver loaded.
In many cases, things work without xorg.conf.
> Now you can be even forced to uninstall one set of the drivers to use
> the other. And debugging has turned very difficult...
If you have had several different drivers for the same card 15 years
ago, you´d probably have had the same problem.
>> What hasn´t changed is that ATI cards (now made by AMD) cause nothing
>> but trouble ...
>
> Well, "radeon" driver should be by now the best open source VGA driver
> out there, it's almost open source and developers have been working on it
> since many years...
ATI cards have been troublesome with OS/2 2.0 and 3.0, with various
versions of Windoze and with Linux.
I have a Radeon card in this laptop, and when I switch over to that card
with vgaswitcheroo, I don´t get any further screen output until I switch
back to the Intel card. The open source driver for them might be great,
it just doesn´t help me when there´s no screen output. If I could have
bought this laptop with an NVDIA card, I would have. All the NVDIA cards
I´ve had just worked fine, and all the ATI cards I´ve had and have seen
were troublesome.
>> Stayvoid, you can use vgaswitcheroo to switch between cards. You need to
>> have the debugfs mounted for that. If you still get screen output after
>> switching over, you´re lucky --- I´m not and so I´m stuck with the slow
>> Intel card.
>
> Intel is another good choice if you don't want many problems and are
> happy with a low-end 3D card.
The Intel card is ok unless I want to play a game. For games, it´s an
euphemism to say that the performance is pathetic.
>> Unfortunately, the free NVIDA drivers are rather useless when you want
>> to play games. You can install the non-free ones from the Debian
>> packages.
>
> I've always been lucky with nvidia closed drivers. I don't like the fact
> they are closed but at least I get a stable system with few glitches.
Yeah, that´s why I keep buying NVDIA cards: they work. Now I didn´t have
a choice but to get an ATI card in this laptop, and of course, it
doesn´t work ...
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