Ubuntu – Why do the Nouveau drivers work better than the Nvidia ones

nouveaunvidiaxorg

I have a bit of a weirdie here.

My rig uses an Nvidia GeForce 8600 GTS in a PCIE x16 slot. Up to about a year ago, no problems with the card. I then started getting random crashes. They got more frequent.

Now, first thought: It's an old card. But I don't have the bucks to buy a new one, and my mobo doesn't have the DVI input that my monitor needs. So, I decided to take a shot with the Nouveau drives.

Amazingly, they have worked flawlessly. Does anyone have a guess as to why?

Best Answer

There are three possible reasons I can think of

Less bugs, better compatibility: The source is open — with the nouveau drivers, you probably have a lot more people looking at the code, and it is also easier to deal with changes on the X Windows System and linux kernel sides that break the driver code, and bugs are easier to track.
Issues with 3D acceleration part of the video card, or some feature that is only supported by the proprietary drivers. It is possible that your card is actually damaged, and that you don't get random crashes because nouveau does not use the affected components.
Bad memory. I don't know to which extent are the drivers so different that their different memory usage patterns explain this, but you may have some bad main memory or video card memory (random crashes are a common effect of bad memory). The former is easier to test, using memtest86+, the latter may be supported by tools like memtest86+, but I've never played with video card memory stress testing...

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Switch between nvidia-current and nouveau without a reboot

I now have two scripts that switch drivers, xorg.conf, take care of blacklisting and the libglx, so the answer is: yes, it is possible.

Blacklisting works with one file in /etc/modprobe.d/ containing either blacklist nvidia or blacklist nouveau. I also replaced /lib/nvidia-current/modprobe.conf with a dummy, else the nvidia driver would always create a link in /etc/modprobe.d/ that blacklists nouveau.

Switch to nouveau:

 #!/bin/bash
 stop gdm

 rmmod nvidia

 sed -i "s/nouveau/nvidia/" /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-nvidia-nouveau.conf

 update-alternatives --set gl_conf /usr/lib/mesa/ld.so.conf
 ldconfig

 modprobe nouveau

 cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf{.nouveau,}

 start gdm

After executing that, I have nouveau running and a working console (nouveaufb).

Switch to nvidia:

#!/bin/bash
stop gdm

echo 0 > /sys/class/vtconsole/vtcon1/bind
rmmod nouveau
rmmod ttm
rmmod drm_kms_helper
rmmod drm

sed -i "s/nvidia/nouveau/" /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-nvidia-nouveau.conf

update-alternatives --set gl_conf /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf
ldconfig

modprobe nvidia-current

cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf{.nvidia,}

start gdm

→ Nvidia driver is working, only problem: after unloading the nouveau driver, the console is unusable. I need a way to reset it or load another framebuffer, but since vesafb is compiled into the kernel I don't know what to do.

Ubuntu – Need a PCIe desktop graphics card for dual-monitor

I've bought the Nvidia Geforce GT 620.

The GT 620 is a 2012 card, and at the lower-end card so it's affordable, but still performant at 11.2 gigatexel/second fill rate - and it supports multiple monitors on the different outputs (HDMI, DVI, VGA).

So far it works fine. I've got two identical monitors one on the HDMI and other on DVI, and and the colors seem slightly different at factory default settings.

It seems the main thing is to avoid Quadro cards on linux - GeForce cards work fine.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Switch between nvidia-current and nouveau without a reboot

Ubuntu – Need a PCIe desktop graphics card for dual-monitor

Related Question