[Mageia-discuss] Glitch with nvidia FX 5500 card driver

[TJ]

On 01/20/2012 02:17 AM, Maarten Vanraes wrote:
> Op donderdag 19 januari 2012 22:19:12 schreef TJ:
> [...]
>>> oic, so you think it's something that's fixed in nvidia-current, but
>>> nvidia- legacy still has this problem?
>>
>> Yes. I'm far from being an expert, but it appeared to me that there is a
>> problem with the nvidia 173.14.30 driver Mageia 1 uses for FX cards that
>> isn't in the nvidia-current (225?) driver. I don't know if it exists in
>> the 96xx driver, too.
>>
>> I apologize. I should have looked up the version numbers before my
>> original post.
>>
>> TJ
>
> to me, it sounds like behavior change that was there before, but gotten
> changed likely for efficiency reasons in nvidia, but after KDE started showing
> quite some issues, it gotten removed... these are all upstream bugs, and it
> could be beneficial if you can submit a bugreport to the upstream about it
> (nvidia).
>
> however, i would hope KDE would have fixed their assumption on it, so, maybe
> you could test in the cauldron if possible?
>
> i don't think we ourselves can do much about this...
>
The site http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux_display_archive.html 
contains some interesting information.

For one thing, I see that a 173.14.31 driver was released August 17. The 
release highlights say, "Fixed a bug that caused freezes and crashes 
when resizing windows in KDE 4 with desktop effects enabled using X.Org 
X server version 1.10 or later." An uninformed person like me could 
stretch that description to be possibly related to the problem I see 
with the 173 driver, so perhaps the problem has already been solved.

The site also says that both of my cards are supported by this driver, 
so that clears up one nagging question that I had, namely if the driver 
could be tested without switching back and forth between cards. I only 
have two computers, and disrupting things too much for testing the one 
my brother uses when his problem has been eliminated by other means 
would only serve to annoy my brother.

The computer I use also uses the 6200OC card, the same model in fact 
that now resides within my brother's computer. So, I suppose I could, in 
what there is of my spare time, create another Mageia install (I almost 
think it would be easier for me to use Mageia 1), download the updated 
driver from nvidia, figure out how to install it (I always used the 
proprietary drivers available from the distro before), and try a test.

Or maybe it would be better if I filed a bug report/package request for 
the update and participate in testing along with whoever else might wish 
to do so.

TJ