Maverick Meerkat, Nvidia-96 and Compiz

[christian.remboldt]

@Xoanan the package you are missing is xutils-dev, but it still wont compile due to a bug in the CVS unless you revert a few changes. Next this thread is about ONLY the nvidia-96 legacy driver. If your hardware supports the 173-legacy driver, which has already been fixed by nvidia. All you had to do was remove the old driver and install the new one.

@tigang This problem has NOTHING to do with Ubuntu. This issue was recorded long before the release date. In fact I started this thread on the 8th two day before official release. Ubuntu can not be held responsible for the lack of a timely update by NVIDIA.

10.10 is an incremented update and not necessary for general use. The "masses" should stick to LTS releases. If you advised recent converts other than this. You lead them astray and once again Ubuntu cant be held responsible for this.

Additionally if you needed any more evidence for the open source movement you have it in spades. On as side note. I believe this issue is only present with people upgrading form 10.04. Fresh installs of 10.10 should automatically install the nouveau driver(with out 3d support). This is an effort by Ubuntu to remove any need for proprietary software form their distributions.

Finally your attitude is unappreciated and unneeded. This is software libre, contribute before you criticize. Just because a few users experienced issues, you cant generalize the whole release.

[tigang]

christian.remboldt

All you say is true and I apologise for my unfair comments.

I have been taking the 6-monthly updates since I started using Ubuntu three years ago without a hitch, so I envouraged my friends to do the same. As you said, it is not Ubuntu's fault that Nvidia had not got it act together for the new xorg, but I am still disappointed that the dist upgrade did not disable the defunct Nvidia driver and enable Nouveau so that non-expert users could at least get a working system.

I have used your fix and installed the driver that you so kindly pre-compiled... all works perfectly.

Many thanks and best regards.

[beew]

Christian

While I somehow get my Nvidia card to work I am still mystified by the fact that I don't even have an xorg.conf file and trying to create one takes me to the terminal when reboot. Running startx gives the error message "no screens found", the only way to get back to the Desktop is to remove xorg.conf. Since quite a few people report success with your method I think for them it is not an issue (I started with an upgrade from Lucid, then I did a clean install and ran into the same problem in both instances)

Since this is a test install on an old machine (Inspiron 8500, 2.2 GHZ, 512M of Ram) I wouldn't mind reinstalling just to try out your method so that I can learn something. But it is a no go if I can't even make the first step.

BTW, I notice video playback is very choppy (for flash and MP4) and cpu usage is always hovering around 100%, --I disable Compiz and put the system on openbox whenever I play videos so it is easier on ram,--I wonder if using your method may improve video performance (the card is GeForce4 Ti 4200 Go AGP 8x)

[christian.remboldt]

@tigang apologies accepted and glad to hear things are working better for you now.

@beew video performace will be an issue with the nouveau driver. Without a xorg.conf file xorg does its best to auto configure everything. This may be using the nouveau driver but most likely it is the fail safe fglrx driver. You can check /var/log/Xorg.0.log to see what is happening. If you only get a termianl prompt when booting with xorg.conf, there is a problem with the configurations in this file. I recommend trying my simple xorg.conf and comapring the two log files. Dont use nvidia-xconfig it wont work. The xorg.conf I put in the first post is the xorg.conf.failsafe from xorg 1.7 with fglrx replaced with nouveau

[messenjer]

Current git version is broken. You can download the latest stable version :

wget http://cgit.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/snapshot/mesa-7.9.tar.gz
tar xzvf mesa-7.9.tar.gz
cd mesa-7.9
./autogen.sh
./configure --with-dri-drivers=nouveau
make
sudo cp lib/nouveau_vieux_dri.so /usr/lib/dri/

[Xoanan]

@ChristianRembolt; Not sure which driver I am supposed to have. I saw both of them installed when I was using 10.04.

@beew; thanx and trying again; I'll let you know.

[christian.remboldt]

@messenjer nice call on the snapshot.

@Xoanan You shouldn't have both drivers installed. If your device uses the nvidia-173 driver. Remove the nouveau driver and use the updated version of nvidia-173 from the maverick meerkat repo.

If you mean you aren't sure which nvidia driver to use. The simplest way to check is to remove all nvidia drivers from your system. Then restart in recovery mode and run /System/Administration/Additional Drivers. If your card is supported by a 173 or newer, it will be installed. If not you need to use nouveau.

For users of the nvidia-96 driver make sure and remove it before switching to nouveau.

[John Harrington]

Which nouveau hardware accelerated 3d driver you need depends on your card. According to the nouveau website, for nvidia chips from nv30 and up, you need the driver nouveau_dri.so which is in the maverick universe libgl1-mesa-dri-experimental package. For nvidia chips nv20 and earlier, you need nouveau_vieux_dri.so.

I don't think nouveau-vieux-dri.so is in any maverick package in the official repositories. It seems to have been removed from libgl1-mesa-dri-experimental before the maverick final release. However, you don't need to build it. I got it by adding the xorg-edgers ppa repository: https://launchpad.net/~xorg-edgers/+archive/ppa

nouveau_vieux_dri.so is in the libgl1-mesa-dri package (not the experimental package, which I don't need at all). After adding the repository, reloading (using synaptic), installing all updates, and doing a cold reboot (power completely off and then back on), I had accelerated 3d. Foobillard (a 3d pool simulation) worked just as well as with the nvidia proprietary driver, except that some of the textures looked different.

To determine which nvidia chip you've got, go here: http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/CodeNames
I have a GeForce 4 MX card, which corresponds to the NV10 chip.

[Xoanan]

@ChristianRembolt; it looks the 96 driver;
@beew; tried your trick again and it worked! Thanx!!

[tigang]

Which nouveau hardware accelerated 3d driver you need depends on your card. According to the nouveau website, for nvidia chips from nv30 and up, you need the driver nouveau_dri.so which is in the maverick universe libgl1-mesa-dri-experimental package. For nvidia chips nv20 and earlier, you need nouveau_vieux_dri.so.

I don't think nouveau-vieux-dri.so is in any maverick package in the official repositories. It seems to have been removed from libgl1-mesa-dri-experimental before the maverick final release. However, you don't need to build it. I got it by adding the xorg-edgers ppa repository: https://launchpad.net/~xorg-edgers/+archive/ppa

John

Obviously my nvidia chip comes into the <=nv20 category hence Christian's pre-compiled driver working for me. I guess if I'd set the edgers ppa I would not have needed Christian's driver, but as that is working I'll wait until the proprietary nvidia driver is fixed and try that. I am not opposed to the Nouveau driver (especially as it is open source), but the current setup is definitely slower and some Compiz extras are not functioning correctly/at all.