Re: xserver-xorg vs. xserver-xorg-video-nouveau
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).
> 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").
> Nowadays, you don´t really need to do anything ...
No? Nothing? Really? I mean, really?
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. In the old times, editing one line at xorg.conf was all
to get the driver loaded. Now you can be even forced to uninstall one set
of the drivers to use the other. And debugging has turned very
difficult...
> 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...
> 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.
> 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.
Greetings,
--
Camaleón
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