Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: Heads Up Kernel-3.11 Nvidia-drivers

[Mark Knecht]

Hi All,
   I've reported two problems recently to the list:

1) Problems with X11 configuration on my 3 monitor, 2 card setup
2) A >2 minute login problem

This morning, based on Nikos' comments yesterday about
gentoo-sources-3.10 being a long term support kernel, I brought up
3.10.7. As with earlier recent attempts I didn't get X at all.

As an experiment I tried removing everything from my xorg.conf having
to do with the second card & monitor and tried the newest
nvidia-driver package listed on their site as "Long Lived Branch"
which is 319.49. Amazingly, _both_ problems were solved. X came up
nicely (on 2 monitors only) and login is immediate.

   I think for my needs I'll remove the unused card, live with 2
monitors for now and consider how to proceed while maintaining a long
term supported nature to the kernel and video drivers. I run 'mostly
stable' so as long as long term kernels get security updates and I
don't add new hardware to this 3 year old machine I think I'll be
happy.

Cheers,
Mark

On Tue, Sep 3, 2013 at 1:25 PM, Mark Knecht <markknecht@×××××.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 3, 2013 at 12:51 PM, Barry Schwartz
> <chemoelectric@×××××××××××××.org> wrote:
>> Mark Knecht <markknecht@×××××.com> skribis:
>>> 2) Drop nvidia-drivers and try nouveau. May be a reasonable video
>>> direction - my screen-based video/graphics needs are not high -
>>> however I have long terms needs of accessing the GPU as a compute
>>> engine in R so I _think_ I have to stick with nvidia-drivers to do
>>> that. Maybe not but I don't know at this time and I could deal with
>>> that later. (I know Duncan's vote, if he's reading, goes here.) :-)
>>
>> I’ve had real trouble with nouveau graphics, not considering cuda
>> computing issues, and so have resigned myself to nvidia’s fetters for
>> the while. I’d switch graphics cards to be freer but, like fictional
>> Jerry Seinfeld’s nana, I’m ‘on a very fixed income’. :)
>
>
> She's a great lady. Gotta luv her, and you're advice also. :-)
>
> One thing I hate about my current setup is that with two different
> nvidia cards OpenGL only works on the 2 screens attached to the
> GTX465. No video apps work on the 3rd display, and the KDE OpenGL
> features like (from memory - it's been so loon) Alt-F8, or whatever it
> was that allows me to see all 6 desktops at once, don't work at all.
> My friends machine which has 2 8400's work perfectly in that respect.
>
> Finding a new card isn't out of the question. I'd prefer to find a
> single card that drove 4 monitors, like maybe one or two of the
> Quadro's do, but it's money and risk as I don't know of any Gentoo
> User types using those cards.
>
> I suspect I can disassociate the CUDA stuff if I have to. I don't have
> to tell X11 that the 465 is in the machine, and I have 3 PCI Express
> slots so I could potentially have 2 VGAs and 1 CUDA. (I think...)
>
> Thanks for the inputs.
>
> Cheers,
> Mark