07 March, 2012

Finally NVIDIA Free!

In the Prague office 2 weeks ago I saw our big touch schreen computers. These have NVIDIA video cards, and no proprietary drivers - yet they run composited desktops just fine. As my last attempt at having a composited desktop with nouveau failed I was afraid to try again and I must admit that it took me until 3 at night. I messed up my install quite a bit, it seems. But once done - it works! I can even play RTCW, but Warcraft III refuses to work with an error ("could not open Game.dll") which according to the interwebs is most likely graphics related. I hope I can fix that one day - but for now, I can live without games (almost never play 'em anyway) and I'm quite happy with my proprietary-driver-free system!
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13 comments:

  1. AnonymousWednesday, 07 March, 2012

    Does that mean that openSUSE 12.2 will ship them by default?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jos PoortvlietWednesday, 07 March, 2012

    The nouveau drivers? I'm quite certain they are in there already...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. AnonymousWednesday, 07 March, 2012

      Not the 3D Mesa drivers -- at least in 12.1.

      Delete
    2. Jos PoortvlietWednesday, 07 March, 2012

      Well, dunno - I have the standard Mesa driver and the standard X11 nouveau driver, and have compositing, GL apps running etcetera... So what exactly is missing in 12.1 then? And no, I didn't get anything from any special repo...

      Delete
    3. Jos PoortvlietWednesday, 07 March, 2012

      Aaah, you can get 3D packages on software.opensuse.org, searching for Mesa-nouveau3d (include home projects under 'searchoptions'). Going to try that now :D

      Delete
    4. AnonymousTuesday, 13 March, 2012

      I know where to get them but my question was if nouveau3d will be included in openSUSE 12.2 by default (and not to be manually added via an unsupported, private repository) and you have yet to answer that question.
      So: Will openSUSE 12.2 ship nouveau3d by default?

      Delete
  3. AnonymousWednesday, 07 March, 2012

    Congratulations ... I think, though I don't see the point. I consider the driver to be a part of the GC, so I would never buy a card from a vendor that did not provide a full fledged linux driver.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Jos PoortvlietWednesday, 07 March, 2012

      It's quite old. Bought it about 6 years ago... Back then there wasn't really choice, NVIDIA did quite well actually.

      Delete
  4. Martin KlapetekWednesday, 07 March, 2012

    Did you install it on a laptop or desktop? And if laptop, how does the power consumption compare to the binary drivers?

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    Replies
    1. Jos PoortvlietWednesday, 07 March, 2012

      Srry, desktop... No idea about power usage. But it's a VERY old card in any case, Geforce 6600.

      Delete
  5. Gertjan Lettink a.k.a. knurphtWednesday, 07 March, 2012

    Running a 2 x openSUSE 12.1/Tumbleweed on an ASUS laptop. One has the NVIDIA blob installed, the other uses the nouveau driver. The blob feels a bit smoother, no glitches, the nouveau driver feels faster, shows some artifacts when > 40 windows+browser tabs open, but still OK. Desktop effects on both sides. And yes, I work that way.

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  6. AnonymousFriday, 09 March, 2012

    How well does it work with a dual-screen setup? Does it run the card at full 3d clocks all the time?

    .Patrik

    ReplyDelete
  7. AnonymousFriday, 09 March, 2012

    I have been running on nouveau for quite some time and it gets huge improvements from release to release, in 12.1 it's just fine.

    Howerver I wonder, how did you get RTCW running? Wine, native? Last time I tried I had no sound IIRC.

    ReplyDelete

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