[PlanetCCRMA] 64bit, 32bit, and other things

[Niels Mayer]

I don't think the nouveau drivers are ready for primetime. Even some of the
redhat folks on #fedora indicate they tried nouveau and went back
to kmod-nvidia -- 190.53-3.fc12.x86_64 works fine w/ the quiet and
power-efficient integrated onboard NVidia video on ASUS M2N68-VM mobo
(YMoboMV)

I have the following installed on that opteron 1220
desktop<http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4312771&CatId=3371>
:

kmod-nvidia-190.53-3.fc12.x86_64
xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-190.53-2.fc12.x86_64
nvidia-xconfig-1.0-2.fc12.x86_64
xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs-190.53-2.fc12.x86_64
nvidia-settings-1.0-3.4.fc12.x86_64
kmod-nvidia-2.6.32.9-70.fc12.x86_64-190.53-3.fc12.x86_64

For details, see http://fedorasolved.org/video-solutions/nvidia-yum-kmod/
http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mjm-fedora-nvidia.html

> There are 3 different drivers that currently support Nvidia hardware in
> some form. They are:


> nouveau - 3D hardware accelerated open source driver. This driver is is GPL
> and with Fedora 10 and older, it was not installed. However it is installed
> and enabled by default in Fedora 11 and newer. This is a
> development/experimental driver intended to support 3D accelerated graphics,
> but currently only supports 2D.



> nvidia - 3D hardware accelerated closed source proprietary driver. This
> driver is provided only from Nvidia and provides the best high performance
> video and 3D functionality.


nv - 2D open source driver. This driver is GPL included in any distribution
> that includes the X-server and was default in Fedora 10 and older. This
> driver provides only basic 2D support and has mostly been replaced
> withnouveau.


As I just want the damn thing to work and don't care about kernel tainting,
I chose 'nvidia' and
'kmod-nvidia' ... The only caveat with this option is that you should watch
out for kernel updates where kmod-nvidia (a "meta package") can't find the
corresponding kernel module (because they get pushed to update servers at
different times). Sometimes the kernel appears first, and then the kmod, and
if you accidentally update, you could boot into a nongraphic system. Also,
if you do update, the new kmod overwrites the old and you could end up w/ a
nongraphic system just by logging out and back in before rebooting...

Recently, for example, the kernel updated but ther matching
 kmod-nvidia-2.6.32.9-70.fc12.x86_64-190.53-3.fc12.x86_64 wasn't there yet.
At the same time, there was the whole blunder with a new NSS propagating w/o
a dependency ... to take care of the whole mess all at once:

sudo yum update --exclude kernel-firmware --exclude kernel-headers --exclude
kernel --exclude kernel-devel --exclude nss --exclude 'nss-*'

And then a few days later (yesterday), i finally did a regular 'yum update'
and picked up all the problematic packages, after things settled down.

Niels
http://nielsmayer.com
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