Hi,
New to openSUSE and liking it, have an Nvidia Geforce 9400 card and cannot find how to get linux out of software rendering mode. Installing the Nvidia Dock give me an icon that doesn’t open or launch anything, I cannot find the Nvidia settings. Typing nvidia-settings at terminal says command not found.
Fresh install of GeckoLinux_ROLLING_Cinnamon.x86_64-999.161031.0
It may not have all the “recommended” packages, so if it is missing something I would appreciate resolving what is missing so it can be included in an update.
I read a few pages of posts and gathered that I may need to blacklist the nouveau driver but figured I would let those more knowledgeable than me take a shot at it before I break it even further.
Install Mesa-dri-nouveau to use (hardware) OpenGL with the open source nouveau driver, or install the proprietary nvidia driver (nvidia-settings is part of the latter).
The user did a fresh Tumbleweed install from (my) GeckoLinux, and I wasn’t including that package by default. (I don’t know much about Nvidia and Radeon hardware, I’ve always used only Intel.) Good to know for future versions.
> Knurpht;2799037 Wrote:
> > AFAIK there is none yet for 42.1, but there will be for 42.2 . The
> > splitting is needed for KDE Plasma 5.8
>
> Ah I see, so it’s already integrated and working with the existing Mesa
> package for Leap?
>
>
Sorry I wasn’t clear, I meant for Leap 42.1? It’s not necessary to install any other packages for 3D rendering with Nouveau?
Also, if the Mesa-dri-nouveau was split out because of incompatibilities with KDE 5.8, does that mean that I should probably not include it by default on my SuseStudio spin based on Tumbleweed with KDE?
If you want to be sure, search the factory ML or better, ask the maintainer. I think you’d better include it to make sure nvidia users can run KDE properly, but I’m not familiar with the details.
Installing the Mesa-dri-nouveau package with YaST2 worked, I have hardware acceleration now (I think) because CPU usage went from 40% - 60% down to 2% - 4% but I still cannot access any of the settings for the Nvidia card, Nvidia Dock icon is present but does not launch the program.
At least the issue is resolved and VLC plays video smoothly. I don’t game on this system but I do want it to play media smoothly.
Thank you for the help and I have related this to the writer of the Gecko Linux distro who also expressed thanks.
The nvidia-dock applet only works with the NVIDIA proprietary driver. The nouveau driver doesn’t have a GUI/settings interface. You can use the desktop’s settings though to change font rendering, DPI etc.
AFAIK, no, the package split has not been released as update for 42.1.
Also, if the Mesa-dri-nouveau was split out because of incompatibilities with KDE 5.8, does that mean that I should probably not include it by default on my SuseStudio spin based on Tumbleweed with KDE?
Well, 42.1 comes with a completely different version of Mesa.
Also, the main problems are not really “incompatibilities with KDE 5.8”, actually kwin has a fix for that now (it tries to detect freezes and switches to XRender automatically then).
nouveau (still) doesn’t like multi-threaded applications though, and will (likely) just crash if OpenGL is used from separate threads.
This is a long standing design problem in nouveau though (so likely affects 42.1 or even 13.2 too) and may affect any application.
Most (including gnome-shell, but also plasmashell) probably do not have this problem.
One particular thing that’s pretty sure to crash is QtWebEngine, which is used as rendering enging in KDEPIM 16.08 (42.1 comes with older versions that still use QtWebKit and are not affected), but we even patched that to use software rendering if nouveau is detected.
(that warning has been worded before those patches had been added)
And nouveau may be unstable in general anyway (depending on your graphics card), but that’s also nothing new, and not only related to OpenGL either.
