Notice: nvidia-kernel patches required.
The nvidia-* packages in sid/amd64 have a couple of
small issues that I have discovered and would like to
point out to everyone else for future reference.
Firstly, it is imperitave that you upgrade to a
2.6.11+ kernel (whether a debian image or roll your
own). Previous kernels have a bad implementation of
change_page_attr. The complete text from nvidia is
available here:
ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/1.0-7167/README.txt
Secondly, many users have reported bad performance
under OpenGL applications (games). Not all games, but
a good majority of them. I'm not certain what the
cause is, directly, but nvidia has provided a patch.
Actually, two patches. They are available here:
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/attachment.php?attachmentid=10788
and here:
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/attachment.php?attachmentid=10794
Since debian-amd64 has its own custom implementation
of nvidia-kernel-source (and, as far as I know, you
cannot simply install the NVIDIA-*pkg.run file) you'll
have to apply the first patch to
/usr/src/modules/nvidia-kernel/nv/os-agp.c
and the second patch to
/usr/src/modules/nvidia-kernel/nv/nv.c,
after you have untarred the
nvidia-kernel-source.tar.gz file that you have
downloaded from apt-get.
It would be best if we could have the maintainer patch
these himself and move them back upstream. I have not
yet contacted him myself because I'm uncertain as to
whether these patches are universal (meaning perhaps
they won't work for everyone or make matters worse for
other folks).
Regards,
Zaq Rizer
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