Monitors requiring interlaced video modes with older Nvidia video cards are out of options in wheezy
I thought this would probably happen eventually. And it did.
I use an Nvidia video card with a RIVA TNT2 chipset. My CRT monitor,
an IBM G51, has a maximum pixel clock rate of 70 MHz. In order
to get 1024x768 resolution out of this monitor I must use an
interlaced video mode. (There is a 1024x768@60 non-interlaced mode,
but the flicker level is unacceptable.) I run wheezy. And I am now
officially out of supported options for the X server.
I can't use the nouveau driver because the nouveau driver doesn't work
with interlaced video modes. I filed a bug report a good while ago. See
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=589452
No response.
I can't use the proprietary nvidia driver because the
legacy-71xx driver package has not been updated to work with the version
of the X server that is used by squeeze and later releases.
And apparently, it never will be.
I can't use the nv driver because the nv driver has been dropped from
the distribution.
I can't use the vesa driver because, so far at least, I have not found
a way to make it use an interlaced mode.
The most recent "aptitude full-upgrade" forced me to remove the
previously-installed xserver-xorg-video-nv package. My best options,
other than a hardware upgrade, are to use nouveau and drop down to
a lower resolution, such as 800x600, or put up with intolerable flicker
at 1024x768.
My solution? I downloaded the source package for xserver-xorg-video-nv
from squeeze, compiled it under wheezy, installed it, and hoped for the
best. Fortunately that worked.
I really don't see why nv had to be dropped from the distribution. If
the powers that be believe the code to be in violation of the DFSG
(code obfuscation is the charge, I believe), then I don't see why it can't
be offered in non-free.
I really did try hard to make nouveau work for me, but it just doesn't.
--
.''`. Stephen Powell
: :' :
`. `'`
`-
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