[plug] Mandrake 10 locks up(NNH)

[Leon Brooks]

On Tue, 3 Aug 2004 12:56, Innis Cunningham wrote:
> Leon Brooks writes
>> Not the screensaver?

> Screensaver?.Why would the screensaver work when I
> am activly using the computer.

I wasn't clear that you were actively doing stuff, just that the 
computer had been up for a few minutes.

>> More issues with NVidia's binary drivers. If you're using those,
>> switch back to the FOSS ones ("nv" driver instead of "nvidia"
>> in /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 file) and see what effect that has.

>> NVidia's own drivers are also very, very picky about which drivers
>> (AGP and the like) are loaded in which order, and there are various
>> options you can tweak in a hunt for reliability.

> This is not good news for a newbe such as me.

No, it isn't. Write a nastygram to NVidia about it. If they Opened their 
drivers like XGItech did, this problem wouldn't exist.

>> The FOSS nv drivers don't do 3D acceleration very well (barely at
>> all) but they are dead-set stable and reliable.

> This is a double hit for me as the main reason for swiching to linux
> in the first place was to use the flight simulator flightgear and it
> needs the 3D acceleration to be running perfectly

Ah, well, you'll be delighted to know that the NVidia drivers are also a 
bit hit-or-miss under MS-Windows, as well (less miss under MS-Windows 
because they have more people whining about that and spend more effort 
patching it).

Generally, other than MS-Windows' background bitrot, if you can set the 
drivers up to work reliably (as is often but not always the case after 
some tweaking on either set of OSes), you never-ever touch them again 
and they'll stay happy.

Do, however, keep copies of everything you do (including driver versions 
etc) to get a working system, in case you ever need to re-do it (hard 
disk crash or whatever).

I specifically avoid using NVidia hardware for that very reason. I just 
want a reasonable 3D card which works reliably and NVidia don't provide 
that. They provide expensive cards which work well in a very limited 
range of settings, and cheapish, crappy, unreliable cards otherwise.

ATI are not much better, but they are still better. XGItech seem to be 
making the effort even more than ATI but they are still very much the 
new kids on the block.

Ask NVidia-on-Linux questions here:

    http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=14

Cheers; Leon