SliTaz Forum

guest_account

Member

Registered: 2011-11-27

Posts: 57

Problems with Nvidia nouveau driver

For more than one reason I'm sticking to the nouveau driver, which seems enough for non-demanding games such as zdoom and PS1/N64 emulators. Besides it's far easier to install (or should be) than proprietary Nvidia.

I read the xorg-xf86-video-nv driver was discontinued since long ago.

Problem is that nouveau is not working well here.

This is an old geforce GT 220 gpu.

Process I followed is:

--Uninstalled both xorg-xf86-video-fbdev and vesa packages

--Ran tazx -> install or reconfigure Xorg -> automatic configuration (which does exactly the same as just tazpkg -gi xorg-xf86-video-nouveau)

--Logged out from X session and logged back in (X graphic login screen still autostarts)

Ran:

[c]tux@slitaz:~$ glxgears
Error: couldn't get an RGB, Double-buffered visual
tux@slitaz:~$
tux@slitaz:~$
tux@slitaz:~$ glxinfo
name of display: :0.0
Error: couldn't find RGB GLX visual or fbconfig

tux@slitaz:~$[/c]
Can someone help please?

Am I missing something?

guest_account

Member

Registered: 2011-11-27

Posts: 57

Re: Problems with Nvidia nouveau driver

EDIT:

After reading some very old past threads about Nvidia drivers I finally found a solution, or almost...

I apologize for the rant above; I can no longer edit the post, hope a mod could better delete it.

In the above process I missed to mention I obviously also installed mesa-demos, for the glxgears command.

The missing package seemed to be: mesa-wayland.

This is the package that directly makes glxgears and glxinfo to work, even with basic fbdev and vesa drivers alone.

With vesa, glxgears runs 5 FPS, and the gears animation looks indeed laggy.

With nouveau, glxgears runs 60 FPS.

I would still need to test some few games themselves of course, though I'd like to think this glxgears test could be a good start, for it runs 60 FPS without causing throttle to the CPU monitor in the task bar at top right.

However, after testing, I got some remaining doubts that I'd like to ask. Hope you can help me.

--By installing mesa-wayland, which also installs wayland package as dependency, am I indeed replacing X for Wayland for rendering?

Does it mean Wayland is the only current way to make drivers work?

Isn't there a way to make it work with default X?

--When installing new GPU drivers and mesa-wayland, I see it only took logging out and back to graphic desktop for changes to be applied. Could it be that logging out and back in kind of restarts /etc/init.d/slim service?

Or should I always better restart it explicitly?

--For nouveau driver I saw it was seemingly enough to just install it. But should I better uninstall the other fbdev and vesa drivers as well?

Thanks again.