nvidia driver quality decrease?

[legluondunet]

I use Nvidia card for ten years now, my first card was a geforce 256. When I started to use Linux, I was happy Nvidia give me a driver on a platform not ever well supported by manufacturers. In return, when I had to change my graphic card, I always took another nvidia card. But today, I'm thinking about changing because I have too much trouble with my card:

- plymouth is ugly with nvidia (Ubuntu)
- my fan is always at 100% (very noisy and higher electricity consuming) and fan control does not work (coolbit 4 does nothing)
- and now I have no more TTY console

All this bugs make my computer experience very uncomfortable. Ok I have good speed with 3D games, ok I have now HD movie acceleration with vdpau, but that's not enough.
At what moment Nvidia driver quality began to decrease? Do Windows users have the same bugs as me? Do they have to thank Nvidia for give them vdpau or other feature improvement? I'm not a third class consumer, I pay my Nvidia card same (big) price as a windows user, I can expect to obtain the same quality services. If not, I'm going to see other products, it's one of my good resolutions of the year, change my manufacturer graphic card if things does not evolve toward a better way, what's yours?

PS: a forum discussion is not a place to track bug, there are better soft for that (see Launchpad, Bugtracker, Redmine, Mantis etc...)

[artem]

1. Plymouth requires KMS and NVIDIA drivers don't support/contain it.
2. Maybe a real bug - bump the thread once in a while, it might get noticed.
3. Non VGA consoles have never been officially supported, this time NVIDIA actually broke VesaFB and so far they cannot make it work again.

So, your second problem is the only valid one.

[johnc]

If you're looking for a solid desktop experience you have to get off of Linux. That isn't a snarky remark, it's just a fact. Getting stuff working in Linux has always been hackery and always will be hackery, and it'll never be a smooth experience.

So you just have to expect that a lot of stuff is going to be broken and / or just plain not work. And it's always changing. One day something is working, the next day it's not. That's just how the platform is.

You can't expect much out of free.

I'm sure your video card works wonderfully in Windows or would likewise if it was shipped in a Mac.

[artem]

Originally Posted by johnc

If you're looking for a solid desktop experience you have to get off of Linux. That isn't a snarky remark, it's just a fact. Getting stuff working in Linux has always been hackery and always will be hackery, and it'll never be a smooth experience.

So you just have to expect that a lot of stuff is going to be broken and / or just plain not work. And it's always changing. One day something is working, the next day it's not. That's just how the platform is.

You can't expect much out of free.

I'm sure your video card works wonderfully in Windows or would likewise if it was shipped in a Mac.

You can always enjoy rock solid Linux by using LTS distros like RHEL or Debian stable/Ubuntu LTS.

[johnc]

Originally Posted by artem

You can always enjoy rock solid Linux by using LTS distros like RHEL or Debian stable/Ubuntu LTS.

That is really the only way something is going to take off... you have a company like RH or Canonical or Google put out a distribution and the big players (in hardware and software) pretty much target those distro versions and not worry about the 400 million other permutations of Linux out there. That's the only way that makes sense.

Even still... the kernel <-> closed source drivers issue is a mess (going to points 1 and 3).

[legluondunet]

Originally Posted by johnc

If you're looking for a solid desktop experience you have to get off of Linux. That isn't a snarky remark, it's just a fact. ....

I'm not agree at all with you, I have a solid desktop experience with Ubuntu. But for several NVIDIA drivers releases, I have very annoying bugs which make my desktop experience uncomfortable: did you yet try to work several hours with a fan graphic card at 100% speed. And remember I payed for a graphic card, it's not like I have bug with a free software I didn't pay. Here, I could expect to obtain a service from Nvidia, I'm not a simple user but a consumer.

[johnc]

Unfortunately the cornerstone of a smooth desktop experience is the video driver... and that is always the biggest point of contention in Linux.

Your fan problem definitely sounds like a bug somewhere... but unfortunately it's probably not exclusive to the nvidia driver, especially since it first appeared when you upgraded to 12.04. And I only say that because there are other people with the driver and video card that don't experience the problem, e.g., the nvidia devs who are unable to reproduce the issue.

I almost feel like I have fewer problems with my Hackintosh than I do Linux.

[Deanjo]

Originally Posted by legluondunet

And remember I payed for a graphic card, it's not like I have bug with a free software I didn't pay.

You paid for a Windows graphics card.

[welle]

Originally Posted by Deanjo

You paid for a Windows graphics card.

This is not a Windows graphics card and the nvidia linux support is not unoffical. I bought two cards because of the support. But during the last half year the driver quality dropped significantly. But there are bugs with vdpau around for over a year that leads to hangs in X but the kernel doesn't freeze. I experience hard crashes/hangs since driver 290.10 on both nvidia cards. So i would say i payed for 2 cards that completely destabilize my system after i upgraded to the latest version. And the coolest thing about this - nvidia knows about the problem and was not able to fix it - 290.10 was released 22. Nov. 2011

[Gusar]

Nvidia linux support *is* unofficial. Have you noticed we're on a third party forum and not on nvidia.com?

And Deanjo is right, we did buy Windows graphics cards. I don't see any penguin on the box of my card, nor are there linux drivers on the included CD (ok, I haven't actually checked that, but I really doubt they're there).

[rmrfchik]

Originally Posted by Gusar

Nvidia linux support *is* unofficial. Have you noticed we're on a third party forum and not on nvidia.com?

Open nvidia.com, navigate to drivers. Open operatin system dropdown. You'll see Linux and FreeBSD among Windows.
Not a word "unofficial", "beta", "unsupported".
Yes, *this* forum may be unofficial, but whole support is official. And, back to topic, despite "official/unofficial" support, drivers quality ins't high, google://kde+nvidia and have fun.

[legluondunet]

Linux distributions should come together to develop a certification "Linux-compatible graphics card", that's the only way for me to obtain a serious video linux support.