What's the frustration factor in running Tumbleweed with NVidia proprietary drivers?

English Hardware
1

See subject.

I’m coming from many years with Arch, where there would often be a bit of lag (often just a few hours or, at most, a few days) between the release of a new kernel and the pre-built package for the compatible NVidia driver.

Now that I’m using OpenSUSE Tumbleweed on a reclaimed machine, I’m trying to decide between just going with the free nouveau drivers or being willing to intervene more when there’s a kernel update.

QUESTION: Typically, how frequent are kernel updates in Tumbleweed that would require a change in prioprietary Nvidia drivers?

QUESTION: I see that everyone around here calls the manual compiling of NVidia drivers “the hard way.” I’m guessing all the docs are easy to find and that it’s really just a matter of lining up the correct source with the correct kernel and kernel headers, right? It’s not the best way to spend a half-hour, but, then there are far worse ways.

Thanks.

2

Frustration factor depends on how easily you are frustrated.

I’m currently running Tumbleweed on systems with Intel graphic, which avoids the Nvidia problem.

When I ran on a system with Nvidia graphics, I was not much troubled by having to install the hard way after each kernel update. The frustration is when installing the Nvidia driver fails, because it is not compatible with the new kernel.

This is somewhat mitigated because opensuse keeps multiple kernels, so you can boot to an older one. It normall keeps only newest and newest-1. But you can set it to also keep oldest. That’s a good safety measure with Nvidia grapics. When I was doing that, I would wait till installing Nvidia driver failed, then turn on keeping the oldest, which would initially be the same as newest-1.

Frequency of kernel updates: it varies. It probably depends on what the kernel developers are doing. Checking, I see that I currently have


-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6108080 Sep  8 16:55 vmlinuz-4.1.6-3-desktop
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6113168 Oct  1 07:38 vmlinuz-4.2.1-1-desktop

and the dates will give an indication of recent kernel update frequency.

Other problems have been relatively minor. There were times when Gnome didn’t load, but KDE still loaded. And Icewm is a fallback which is very likely to load.

Installing Nvidia drivers the hard way:

Boot to a command line (which probably happens automatically if the drivers are not yet installed and nouveau is blacklisted). Become root.


# sh /usr/local/src/NVIDIA*.run

This requires having compiler and similar tools already installed (and linux header files for the compiler that correspond to the kernel – i.e. the “kernel-devel” package).

You do have to download the NVIDIA*.run file from the nvidia site, but you can re-use the same downloaded version until if fails to build.

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On Mon, 12 Oct 2015 22:56:01 GMT dhave wrote:

First, i’m using Tumbleweed only in a virtualbox to see where it
goes but i hope this is not bad for you :slight_smile:

> Now that I’m using OpenSUSE Tumbleweed on a reclaimed machine, I’m
> trying to decide between just going with the free nouveau drivers or
> being willing to intervene more when there’s a kernel update.

Instead of archlinux you can have multiple version of the same kernel
package. Look in “/etc/zypp/zypp.conf” for “multiversion” and
“multiversion.kernels”.

I use “multiversion = kernel-desktop” with an empty
“multiversion.kernels”. After every a kernel update i run this (in a
little script with ‘’ at the end of a line and for the example of a
kernel from 13.2) to compile the nvidia kernel modul:

…/NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-*
–kernel-module-only --kernel-name=3.16.7-24-desktop
–kernel-install-path=/lib/modules/3.16.7-24-desktop/kernel/drivers/video
–accept-license --ui=none --no-questions;

Then you can reboot to the the new kernel with the new nvidia modul.

The “problem” is more that you have to patch the nvidia installer
in some situation if the kernel is too new and if you have to update
the nvidia installer than it is more work than to run only the lines
above if you want to compile the nvidia modul for your other kernel
packages.

If you want my 2c: With Tumbleweed i would prefer nouveau if it is
fast enough for you and if you have no fans on your card :slight_smile:

> QUESTION: Typically, how frequent are kernel updates in Tumbleweed
> that would require a change in prioprietary Nvidia drivers?

Use it for a while and than take a look at /var/log/zypp/history to
search your package (kernel-default and/or kernel-desktop). I don’t
think it is much more often than with archlinux.

4

Some extras re. installing “the hard way”.

  • Use “–no-x-check” as a parameter for the .run installer. This allows you to install the driver from a running X session
  • Also use “–no-nouveau-check” as a parameter for the .run installer. This allows you to proceed the install, even if the nouveau driver is loaded at the time of installing the NVIDIA blob
  • Use “–dkms” (requires the dkms package to be installed). DKMS ( Dynamic Kernel Module Support ) will take care of rebuilding the driver on a kernel update, which means you don’t have to run the installer on each kernel-update.

BTW: Mind, the NVIDIA driver install does not work for Optimus systems, i.e. with dual GPU. One needs Bumblebee for such systems ( and the nvidia-bumblebee package if one wants to use the NVIDIA proprietary driver for such systems ).

5

Thank you, nrickert, Ferenginar, and Knurphtor, for your generously prepared replies which provided exactly the kind of information – some philosophical, some practical – that I was hoping to glean. Encouraged by your counsel, I’ll move toward installing nvidia proprietary kernels along with new kernel releases and see if they stay in any sort of sync. And it seems there are multiple fallbacks, if not.

I’m impressed by the pooled knowledge here, by people’s readiness to share it with a rank outsider and with the apparent lack of “prickliness”.

I hope to hang here a while during my OpenSUSE phase. These phases (working with different distro types) can last anywhere from about four days to 15 years.

Assuming my honeymoon with OpenSUSE goes well, I know I’ll be on the receiving end of counsel and experience for a good while, but I enjoy working with others if the topic is something that I actually do know something about or if it’s something where there are strong incentives to explore it together. I probably know better now what I don’t know than what I thought I knew in years past, you know?

6

On Mon, 12 Oct 2015 22:56:01 GMT
dhave <dhave@no-mx.forums.microfocus.com> wrote:

> Now that I’m using OpenSUSE Tumbleweed on a reclaimed machine, I’m
> trying to decide between just going with the free nouveau drivers or
> being willing to intervene more when there’s a kernel update.

I you are using KDE desktop with TW, you’ll most probably need nVidia
driver as Plasma5 doesn’t work well, if at all, with nouveau. A couple
of days testing Gnome on TW showed no problems with nouveau.

–
Graham P Davis, Bracknell, Berks.
openSUSE 13.2 (64-bit); KDE 4.14.9; AMD Phenom II X2 550 Processor;
Kernel: 4.2.3; Video: nVidia GeForce 210 (Driver: nouveau);
Sound: ATI SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA)

7

You’re right. The nouveau driver holds up well under Gnome. Still, I’m going to experiment with the nVidia proprietary driver as soon as I have some time to spend.

off-topic:

Speaking of Gnome, I haven’t used it in a few years, as I didn’t like the “Activity” rigamarole (that came with Gnome 3?) and always having to zip back and forth from one screen border to the next. But now I see that somehow I’ve grown more tolerant of that, I suspect due to the questionable influence of Windows 8 and 10, which I have to run at my job.

Because I use older machines around the house, I often run XFCE, but pretty much all the DEs and WMs have something in their favor.

Thanks.
I

8

O.K., now that I’ve had some time, I went ahead and changed over the the nvidia driver. Difficulty is about on a par with other distros. And I expect to have to intervene with each kernel update, but that’s O.K. I made my bed; now I’ll sleep in it.

Thanks.