Lucid RC now out - when will proprietary driver issues be fixed?

[azenz]

Two key issues lots of people have with e.g. Nvidia proprietary driver:

- Breaks Kubuntu boot screen (becomes ugly 16 color low-res)

- Each kernel upgrade breaks the driver install (which is normal when using Nvidia installer, but shouldn't happen when using Kubuntu Hardware drivers feature!

Any hope they will get fixed soon? Would be great!!

[doctordruidphd]

Re: Lucid RC now out - when will proprietary driver issues be fixed?

Unlikely this will ever be completely fixed. because the NVIDIA drivers are, after all, proprietary, and therefore not supportable by k/Ubuntu directly.

I can't address the boot screen issue, because I can't get the boot screen animations to work with the proprietary driver.

The overall plan is to provide nouveau as an alternative to the proprietary driver. It isn't really there yet (no 3d acceleration support). I suppose the thinking on this is that eventually nouveau will eliminate the need for the NVIDIA driver, and the problem will go away.

It is also possible to install the nvidia-current package from the nvidia driver repository

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/nvidia-vdpau/ppa/ubuntu lucid main

which provides the current release of the proprietary NVIDIA driver.

Note however that some people -- myself included -- have been unable to get this version of the driver to work on their systems. For those systems where it does work, it seems to solve the problem.

[azenz]

Re: Lucid RC now out - when will proprietary driver issues be fixed?

That is VERY PROBLEMATIC because with Nouveau one cannot get desktop effects, right? Is its 2D performance much lower than the proprietary Nvidia driver? I find this whole Kubuntu Nvidia situation to be really unfortunate, it takes up so much time and spoils the fun of using Linux instead of Windows.

BTW I am using nvidia-current but I don't know how it updates (i.e. recompiles) the driver when the system downloads a new kernel - booting from new kernel simply breaks the graphics. So I've been having to boot from older kernels.

[dibl]

Re: Lucid RC now out - when will proprietary driver issues be fixed?

The 15 minutes I spent playing with Kubuntu 10.04 (pre-beta) with the default nouveau driver indicated that it does a very nice 2D job -- I was pleasantly surprised. So, if 3D is not important to you, then the default video setup should be acceptable.

Of course the inability of the proprietary driver to support installation of a new kernel, without a rebuild of the kernel module, is a well-known "feature". But I'm surprised at the notion that a glx packaged driver that works with earlier kernels fails with a newer one.

Since each version of *buntu is held (relatively) stable, the driver-breaking problem is a pretty rare event, unlike my rolling release sidux in which I get to reinstall the driver weekly. I would like to hear whether you have followed carefully the step-by-step driver installation process here and, if it fails, what the error output is.

[vista killer]

Re: Lucid RC now out - when will proprietary driver issues be fixed?

The only problem i have is with this funky color in boot screen. I think this is very general problem for the distro picture. Most people use nvidia and in this new release will a 16bit color login screen !!!

[dibl]

Re: Lucid RC now out - when will proprietary driver issues be fixed?

If you follow this: http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3110848.0

you can twiddle the boot menu and the quality of the "Plymouth" screen, within some limits, and depending on your monitor. On my rig, I normally run a 1600x1200 screen, but using that setting in Grub2 produces a tiny menu, and no (visible) text on the tty virtual terminals. 1280x1024 makes a better boot menu, but still no tty text (it's there, but it's black on black and I'm not that great a typist). 1024x768x32 is the right answer for my Samsung SyncMaster 1100 and GTX260.

[doctordruidphd]

Re: Lucid RC now out - when will proprietary driver issues be fixed?

But I'm surprised at the notion that a glx packaged driver that works with earlier kernels fails with a newer one.

The miserable history of this can be found here. Note the problem does seem to be confined to dual video card 64-bit systems:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...rs/+bug/548362

[dibl]

Re: Lucid RC now out - when will proprietary driver issues be fixed?

Yeeowch -- "miserable history" is right!

I was particularly amused to read the confident assertion that the downloaded proprietary driver won't work on 10.04.

It's always disturbing to see such an apparent regression -- the nvidia-glx packaging has always been pretty solid, as far as I know. I use the downloaded driver only to get the latest version, but the packaged driver always worked too. Now they've apparently lost the recipe.

I don't see how they'll have any choice but to fix it, and I wouldn't be shocked if the fix involves a kernel tweak, meaning you can look for a new kernel after the 10.04 release. They'll hate having to do that ...

[azenz]

Re: Lucid RC now out - when will proprietary driver issues be fixed?

Since each version of *buntu is held (relatively) stable, the driver-breaking problem is a pretty rare event, unlike my rolling release sidux in which I get to reinstall the driver weekly. I would like to hear whether you have followed carefully the step-by-step driver installation process here and, if it fails, what the error output is.

I used the Official Kubuntu Way (Hardware driver dialogue) to install and that has previously meant that kernel updates don't break the video (some automatic recompiling of video drivers maybe?). When using the official Nvidia way you of course have to recompile every time. But that's exactly what I want to prevent. I do like to fiddle and learn, but at the end of the day I need a WORKING SYSTEM that doesn't require regular command line fiddles that can easily take up several hours. Note I'm not complaining about Lucid Beta, but I am sure hoping that Lucid Final will have a working system in place. So DIBL, I strongly agree with your frustrations!

Regarding nouveau, it seemed to do fine but I do like the Compiz eyecandy, and I do like to get the best performance out of my hardware for which I paid good money! Maybe I'll have to settle with Nouveau....but it will make my Kubuntu experience less desirable...

If you follow this: http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3110848.0 you can twiddle the boot menu and the quality of the "Plymouth" screen

Thanks, I tried that but it didn't work for me, it only increased the resolution of the grub boot menu, but the key issue is the Kubuntu password entry & boot progress screen.

[claydoh]

Re: Lucid RC now out - when will proprietary driver issues be fixed?

I have seen in the past (during the pre-release period) that it can take some time from when the kernel is updated and the proprietary driver packages "catch up" so-to-speak. Now, this should not be happening at this late stage anymore, barring any last-minute problems requiring a new kernal package.

I hope this is somehow resolved for those whom it affects. For me, my desktop with ati onboard graphics works fine in terms of splash, while my 6 year old laptops with ati open drivers would only show the ubuntu 'text' splash until I followed the directions for Nvidia users as well as disabling kms. I would think that there would be a default, 'plain' splash for those that plymouth doesn't work for - at least that's that I thought was happening for me .