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> If you are using their [Nvidia's] driver on any version of UNIX, then you will most likely not be able to switch back and forth between the console and your g
by ohazi 5y ago
> If you are using their [Nvidia's] driver on any version of UNIX, then you will most likely not be able to switch back and forth between the console and your graphical environment.
This is flatly untrue. I'm running Debian and using the Nvidia drivers with a GTX 1070, and switching to the virtual consoles and back to X has always worked fine. In fact, sometimes I have to switch to the virtual console to rescue my session when light-locker eats itself.
> In fact you often cannot run multiple graphical environments simultaneously either, something that is unheard of in the Windows world, but is a given on UNIX systems.
I haven't ever tried this... it might be true. What I have tried is starting two X sessions on laptops with switchable graphics that can use both at once (so one X session for the integrated GPU, and another one with the nvidia driver for the Nvidia GPU). This works fine.
> The only way to work around these issues is to use either the reverse engineered open source Nvidia driver, or configure X to use the generic VESA driver.
In my experience with several generations of Nvidia cards, the Nouveau driver has always been a slower, buggier, worse experience than nvidia's driver. Look, I want Nvidia to release and upstream their driver source as much as anyone, but in my opinion, the author is overstating their case here, and this weakens other parts of their argument that may have some merit.
- lmm 5y agoIn my experience switching only works if you disable the fancy nvidia console driver (that assumes KMS etc.) and use the basic VESA framebuffer driver. The nvidia framebuffer drivers can coexist with nouveau etc. but not with the nvidia binary drivers. That might be what OP is getting at. (I completely agree that the binary nvidia drivers work a lot better - indeed I find them better than the open-source AMD drivers as well)
- jcelerier 5y agoIDK but on ArchLinux, with the "nvidia" package installed, I can have multiple ttys, some with X sessions, some with Wayland sessions, some as consoles
- lmm 5y agoArch Linux means you've probably built a custom kernel, and you won't have the nvidia framebuffer driver unless you deliberately chose to.
- jcelerier 5y agoWhat ? I use the stock kernel like the immense majority of arch users. This isn't Gentoo lol
- jcelerier 5y agosource: https://pkgstats.archlinux.de/packages#query=linux https://pkgstats.archlinux.de/packages#query=linux 72% have the "linux", 40% have "linux-lts". The first "patched" kernel is at 11% of usage
- ohazi 5y agoI see, so essentially this: https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/nvidia-devs-any-eta-on-fbdev-console-mode-setting-implementation/47043 https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/nvidia-devs-any-eta-on... Interesting. I've always had native resolution on this display in the console, so I never really looked into it. I guess it's an EFI thing?
- dansimonm 5y agoThanks for reading my blog :) There may indeed be quite a few errors in there. I meant no offense to Nvidia users, I just have fairly bad experience with that graphic card and console/desktop work on UNIX systems. By that, I mean, things like BSD's and Solaris. Naturally, Linux is your best bet for driver support.