NVIDIA Legacy Driver Updates For X Server 1.7

[phoronix]

Phoronix: NVIDIA Legacy Driver Updates For X Server 1.7

While many of the distributions arriving this autumn and winter are shipping with an X Server 1.6 build rather than the new X Server 1.7, if you are using Fedora 12 or another distribution shipping with the latest X.Org 7.5 packages, there is good news if you are a customer of NVIDIA's older graphics hardware. NVIDIA hasn't updated its three legacy drivers (the 71.xx.xx, 96.xx.xx, and 173.xx.xx series) since this past July when delivering various bug-fixes and new kernel support, they have updated two of their legacy drivers this week. The new releases are 173.14.22 and 96.43.14, which NVIDIA has tagged as legacy pre-releases, and both drivers now contain X Server 1.7 support along with an updated nvidia-installer to detect newer Debian distributions that use /usr/lib32 instead of /emul/ia32-linux as the 32-bit library path...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=NzcwNA

[NSLW]

As of right now, NVIDIA has not updated its 71.xx.xx display driver to offer new X Server compatibility, nor do we know if they intend to update this oldest driver.

They don't plan it. It was written somewhere here on Phoronix or on official nvidia forum.

[DeepDayze]

They don't plan it. It was written somewhere here on Phoronix or on official nvidia forum.

So then most people with the really old nvidia cards are gonna be out of luck till nouveau is ready for primetime. For now there's the nv driver with no 3D support

[NSLW]

So then most people with the really old nvidia cards are gonna be out of luck till nouveau is ready for primetime. For now there's the nv driver with no 3D support

I don't think that many people are so greedy to not spend 7$ on supported NVIDIA graphic card

[[Knuckles]]

I don't think that many people are so greedy to not spend 7$ on supported NVIDIA graphic card

Except AGP nvidia cards aren't that cheap: my fx5200 broke down recently, and on ebay agp nvidia cards were quite expensive considering their specs and that they were second hand.

But what I would like is a fix for geforce 2 MX with 96.xx: nvidia says it works, but it DOESN'T. Insta-crash on X server start, and hasn't worked for 2 or 3 years. And I have two of these. Yay...

[Ant P.]

This, above anything else, is why I'll never buy nv graphics cards.

I often get old discarded PCs, 10 years or older, that have no problems running modern distros. I fix them up and give them to people that don't have a computer of their own. Any nv cards in them, however, end up in the trash. No point wasting electricity on a piece of crap if the driver makes it run worse than the onboard SiS chips.

[val-gaav]

I don't think that many people are so greedy to not spend 7$ on supported NVIDIA graphic card

I have an old box where nvidia 4200 died thus I replaced it with old tnt2 (soemtimes it's good thing to keep old junk just in case ) ... This box is used for office work by family so no 3d aside from some flash or movie playing is used there.

I'm sorry but I did not plan to invest any money in it, and if I have to spend money next time I update the box it for sure will not be on nvidia card ... First I'll try nouveau and then buy the cheapest ati agp card I can find.

[Jimmy]

ATI fan boys bitch and bitch that older NVidia cards aren't well supported when I can go out and buy a brand new ATI card that isn't well supported.

How is it that the support life cycle is shorter for NVidia cards if the ATI support hasn't really started yet? It's almost like more is expected of 10-year-old NVidia hardware than brand new ATI hardware.

[Adarion]

Now I have experience with some nvidia GPUs, AMD-ATI GPUs and VIA GPUs, and and old... was it S3? in my 486. And from these years I can tell that both ATI and Nvidia did a fair job. Both on Windows and Linux. It was never perfect, my Geforce2 and 3 ones are way unsupported by now, I don't blame nvidia that much, it would've been nice but alas they discontinued support. So basically - if there wasn't the xf86-video-nv they would be bricked. That is nasty considering what horrible amount of money I spend back in the days for the Geforce 3.
I switched it to a passively cooled Gef2 (nv11?) in the old box since the Gef3 sucked too much power anyway. And since I nearly only do low level GPU usage stuff with that box it is ok.
The driver itself... I only used nvidias closed driver for a short time in linux (was fairly ok) and on windows. From the windows side there were some issues that were fully broken and some that just worked.

Today I like to have my ATI's around for 3d in Windows (gaming) and under linux I prefer to stick with xf86-video-ati after some time of xf86-video-radeonhd. I threw out fglrx at the beginning of this year when I switched mainboard. It needed a 2.6.29-something at least for the chipset but fglrx was stuck til summer 2009 with 2.6.28. So I just keep waiting for 3d and all other kinds of goodness to happen in the free driver structure (all chips are R600). But it is fairly okay for me. And: There is no "legacy" issue. Even if I had older cards there would be a free driver offering all kinds of things, thanks to spec releases.

And the VIA... I don't want to rant again. But the drivers aren't really doing much besides some 2d (you're happy when at least MPEG2 runs). These chips don't eat much power but they also don't bring you much pleasure.

So with nvidia you might be better off with a recent card and not the older ones, and the guarantee that these cards will brick someday and you'll prolly never see any specs.
From the interview nvidia <-> Phoronix they won't harm noveau but then... well... I actually waited for noveau to happen since my later Geforce 3 times. I don't wait anymore. I use ATI. Fine if they'll ever get noveau running but then I doubt they'll have support for these old nv11 nv20 chips.

With AMD-ATI you'll have a choice in drivers and the older ones should do fine with the free drivers while the recent model will require some waiting or having to arrange with fglrx's likings to Kernel and X versions.

[Anssi]

So then most people with the really old nvidia cards are gonna be out of luck till nouveau is ready for primetime. For now there's the nv driver with no 3D support

Note that current 71.xx driver doesn't have even support for X server 1.6.