Re: [gentoo-user] re: nVidia GeForce 210 and nvidia-drivers-334.21-r3

[Alexander Kapshuk <alexander.kapshuk@gmail.com>]

On 04/15/2014 04:18 AM, Michael Orlitzky wrote:
> On 04/14/2014 07:39 AM, Alexander Kapshuk wrote:
>> I've had to replace my GPU today. Prior to attempting to start X with
>> the new GPU in, I thought I'd pull in the latest updates and reboot the
>> system. X wouldn't start as a result. I've googled for answers, but
>> haven't found a solution so far.
> Nvidia dropped support for the GeForce 210 in their 334 series. It's
> still there in the 331 series, though, if you want to downgrade.
>
> Same thing happened to me a while ago with my old 7800GT. I don't have
> any reason to buy a new GPU, so I switched to nouveau.
>
> Reference: http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html (pick a version, and
> hit "Supported Products").
>
>
>
Thanks for your response. Apologies for the delay in replying.

After googling a bit more I did figure that the problem was with the
proprietary driver I was using.
I did try downgrading to some of these drivers, but to no avail, unless
I did something wrong in the process:
/usr/portage/x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers/nvidia-drivers-304.121.ebuild
/usr/portage/x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers/nvidia-drivers-331.49-r3.ebuild
/usr/portage/x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers/nvidia-drivers-331.49.ebuild
/usr/portage/x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers/nvidia-drivers-331.67.ebuild

What I ended up doing was using the
x11-drivers/xf86-video-nouveau-1.0.10 driver.
I set these up in my kernel .config:
CONFIG_DRM_NOUVEAU=y
CONFIG_NOUVEAU_DEBUG=5
CONFIG_NOUVEAU_DEBUG_DEFAULT=3
CONFIG_DRM_NOUVEAU_BACKLIGHT=y

Enabled nouveau and disabled nvidia in make.conf:
egrep 'nvidia|nouveau' /etc/portage/make.conf
USE="$USE -nvidia consolekit pam policykit udisks upower acpi lm_sensors"
VIDEO_CARDS="nouveau"

And ran:
emerge --ask --changed-use --deep @world

The new driver's been running OK so far.
Playing videos via vlc/mplayer seems to run smooth.
Some youtube videos are a bit choppy, and/or delayed though. Not sure if
it's the nouveau driver to blame or the fact that I've got 1 Gb of RAM
onboard.

Should I have enabled the nouveau USE flag globally in make.conf like I
previously did for nvidia, or is that not necessary?

If there is something else I should be doing, or something I overlooked,
I'd appreciate anyone letting me know.

Thanks.