Re: nvidia vs nouveau driver and initrd.* size
On Sat, 2024-08-03 at 23:49 +0200, Vincent Lefevre wrote:
On 2024-08-01 12:12:31 -0700, Van Snyder wrote:
On Thu, 2024-08-01 at 15:26 +0200, Vincent Lefevre wrote:
Should I switch to the proprietary nvidia driver on these machines?
Without NVidia's graphics accelerator, using software rendering with
nouveau is painfully slow. Sometimes even the mouse cursor is frozen.
Well, with an old machine (~ 10 years old), nouveau was indeed
painfully slow (e.g. when moving a window or when scrolling),
but only with multiple screens. I did not have any issue with
a single screen. And my new machines are OK with nouveau.
This is especially the case if you're looking at a web page that has an
annoying video ad playing in a sidebar.
The NVidia 390 driver is not available for Debian 12 (and it might not
have been available for Debian 11). I wasted a lot of my time, and a
lot of bandwidth in this discussion list, trying to install it. On my
desktop, I installed a Quadro K2200 card to replace by GeForce card --
so now a computer that I use less frequently is stuck with nouveau. On
a laptop, I'm stuck with nouveau or returning to Debian 10.
The NVidia 390 driver is still available in unstable:
zira:~> apt-show-versions -a nvidia-legacy-390xx-driver
nvidia-legacy-390xx-driver:amd64 390.157-6 install ok installed
No stable version
No stable-updates version
No testing version
No experimental version
nvidia-legacy-390xx-driver:amd64/unstable 390.157-6 upgradeable to 390.157-8
I suppose that you can use it even with Debian 12 (I haven't checked
the dependencies, though), but you need to request the unstable
packages in your sources.list file.
Either it's not available, or I'm doing something wrong (or incomplete).
I added /etc/apt/preferences.d/nvidia-390 containing
Package: nvidia-legacy-390xx-driver
Pin: release o=debian a=unstable
Pin-Priority: 10
Then, to avoid sucking anything more from unstable, I added /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/my-default containing
APT::Default-Release "stable";
Then
# apt-show-versions -a nvidia-legacy-390xx-driver
nvidia-legacy-390xx-driver not installed (not available)
# nvidia-detect
Detected NVIDIA GPUs:
04:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation GF108 [GeForce GT 630] [10de:0f00] (rev a1)
Checking card: NVIDIA Corporation GF108 [GeForce GT 630] (rev a1)
Your card is only supported by the 390 legacy drivers series, which is only available up to bullseye.
This is a desktop, and the graphics card is indeed a "card" so I could, in principle, replace it with a newer one.
On my laptop (Dell Vostro 1700)
# nvidia-detect
Detected NVIDIA GPUs:
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation G86M [GeForce 8400M GS] [10de:0427] (rev a1)
Checking card: NVIDIA Corporation G86M [GeForce 8400M GS] (rev a1)
Uh oh. Your card is not supported by any driver version up to 535.183.01.
A newer driver may add support for your card.
Newer driver releases may be available in backports, unstable or experimental.
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