Accelerated 3D Graphics Not Available

[linuxdave]

Hello. I just installed Fedora 12 (fresh, clean install). Using NVIDIA GeForce 7200 GS graphics card. Default Fedora drivers installed but when I try to access the Desktop Effects tool under the Preferences menu in Gnome I get the message you see in the title of this post.

Read through the sticky post on installing hardware vendor drivers, so I haven't done that, but why are there no accelerated 3D graphics available with the video card I'm using?

[Hlingler]

Using NVIDIA GeForce 7200 GS graphics card. Default Fedora drivers installed ... why are there no accelerated 3D graphics available with the video card I'm using?

http://dri.freedesktop.org/wiki/NVID...dwareVendor%29

2D support for the nv3 and up (everything from the Riva to now, basically) is available in Xorg in the nv driver.

Currently NVIDIA 3D DRI development is being done in the Nouveau project, which is rewriting the DDX driver (nv is provided by NVIDIA and is obfuscated, new nouveau will replace it), co-operating with other teams to improve DRM architecture to support NVIDIA cards and writing 3D/DRI support on top of those.

Translation/summary: not yet available with open-source X.Org/Mesa/DRI drivers.

V

[linuxdave]

Originally Posted by Hlingler

http://dri.freedesktop.org/wiki/NVID...dwareVendor%29Translation/summary: not yet available with open-source X.Org/Mesa/DRI drivers.

V

That's just great. You know I've always preferred NVIDIA cards because they have always supported Linux, but it seems that Linux has not always supported NVIDIA.

Is there a way to force the installation of the vendor's drivers? I actually tried installing NVIDIA's driver because it always used to work in earlier versions of Fedora and in Red Hat back when there was only Red Hat and Fedora wasn't even an itch in the pants of the Red Hat folks, and oddly enough I am able to use the NVIDIA drivers for Ubuntu and openSUSE (even though openSUSE discourages it and provides their own RPM packages), but got errors when trying to install on Fedora 12. I can post the exact errors if that would help.

Thanks

[Hlingler]

Is there a way to force the installation of the vendor's drivers?

Yes, of course - perhaps you have not searched the Forum, and have not found the extremely detailed and copious tutorial by Leigh, detailing in every small detail the steps needed to install and enable the proprietary NVidia driver ???

Go to the "Guides and Solutions" section and find it "stickied" near the top of the list. Follow the instructions exactly - no deviations (due to the current problems with RPMFusion packages). If you have previously installed (or attempted to install) the NVidia-supplied binary "blob", you will have to un-install it first (else you'll essentially "double-install" the driver/files, and most likely have problems).

Alternatively: there is another tutorial posted recently in "Guides and Solutions" detailing steps to get the binary blob working (it requires many/all of the same post-install tweaks as the RPMFusion RPMs).

V

[linuxdave]

Originally Posted by Hlingler

Yes, of course - perhaps you have not searched the Forum, and have not found the extremely detailed and copious tutorial by Leigh, detailing in every small detail the steps needed to install and enable the proprietary NVidia driver ???

Go to the "Guides and Solutions" section and find it "stickied" near the top of the list. Follow the instructions exactly - no deviations (due to the current problems with RPMFusion packages). If you have previously installed (or attempted to install) the NVidia-supplied binary "blob", you will have to un-install it first (else you'll essentially "double-install" the driver/files, and most likely have problems).

Alternatively: there is another tutorial posted recently in "Guides and Solutions" detailing steps to get the binary blob working (it requires many/all of the same post-install tweaks as the RPMFusion RPMs).

V

Yes you are correct: I haven't looked at the extremely detailed and copious tutorial by Leigh. I just don't have the time to tinker and poke around like I used to and besides, Linux (and Fedora) has been around and in development long enough now that things just ought to work, period. Especially things like sound and video and basic must have hardware drivers. Years ago I had plenty of time to poke and tinker and tweak, but those days are gone and I don't expect to get them back until I'm too old to worry about it.

I will check it out though; one of these days...

Thanks

[AdamW]

NVIDIA 'supports' Linux by providing a proprietary driver. This is better than providing no driver, but a lot worse than providing or co-operating in the development of an open source driver.

NVIDIA does not 'support' the development of nouveau in any way. They have a corporate policy to the effect that they will provide absolutely no help to the development of nouveau, in fact. This obviously makes it much harder than driver development for co-operative companies, like Intel and AMD/ATI. This is why Intel hardware already has a reliable and fully-featured open source driver available, and most AMD/ATI hardware either does or soon will.

edit: using the proprietary driver on F12 is made slightly harder because it does not play well with the nouveau kernel module or SELinux, both important F/OSS components of Fedora. Obviously, the Fedora project would not inhibit the functionality of these components simply for the benefit of a proprietary driver.

[AdamW]

Originally Posted by linuxdave

Yes you are correct: I haven't looked at the extremely detailed and copious tutorial by Leigh. I just don't have the time to tinker and poke around like I used to and besides, Linux (and Fedora) has been around and in development long enough now that things just ought to work, period. Especially things like sound and video and basic must have hardware drivers. Years ago I had plenty of time to poke and tinker and tweak, but those days are gone and I don't expect to get them back until I'm too old to worry about it.

I will check it out though; one of these days...

Thanks

Fedora does have a hardware driver. It just doesn't happen yet to implement a feature you want, for reasons detailed above (hint: trying to write a complete 3D driver for hardware for which you have no official specifications is not an easy task).

Fedora, by policy and philosophy, does not supply, support or encourage the use of proprietary software. Fedora is a project which considers software freedom an important and desirable goal and will not embrace the short-term benefit of providing proprietary software at the cost of the long-term benefit of encouraging and performing F/OSS development. If there were not Fedora, and distributions like it, there would likely be no nouveau project and no usable F/OSS driver for NVIDIA hardware. Red Hat supports the development of nouveau by paying a developer, Ben Skeggs, to work on it full-time.

[linuxdave]

Originally Posted by AdamW

Fedora does have a hardware driver. It just doesn't happen yet to implement a feature you want, for reasons detailed above (hint: trying to write a complete 3D driver for hardware for which you have no official specifications is not an easy task).

Fedora, by policy and philosophy, does not supply, support or encourage the use of proprietary software. Fedora is a project which considers software freedom an important and desirable goal and will not embrace the short-term benefit of providing proprietary software at the cost of the long-term benefit of encouraging and performing F/OSS development. If there were not Fedora, and distributions like it, there would likely be no nouveau project and no usable F/OSS driver for NVIDIA hardware. Red Hat supports the development of nouveau by paying a developer, Ben Skeggs, to work on it full-time.

I do not know the problems between SELinux and NVidia drivers or why it doesn't play well, but all philosophy aside, there has to be a point where common sense is observed. The nouveau project is admirable but I can also understand why a company that manufactures hardware (and invented the GPU) may not want to share their source code and personally don't have an issue with proprietary drivers. I paid the manufacturer for the hardware (albeit indirectly) and expect the manufacturer to provide me with any software or drivers that are needed for the hardware to work properly. Again, one of the reasons why I have preferred NVidia graphics cards is because they have always provided drivers for Linux and were doing so when everyone else wasn't. It would seem logical that they would want to support SELinux but I don't know if they do or what exactly their position on it is.

I fully support open source technologies and use them every day at work, but even though we use open source technologies, we don't make our source code available to the public and even if we wanted to it is against our corporate policy to share it with anyone.

Don't get me wrong though, I'm grateful for all the work everyone involved with the Fedora project has done, and it was Red Hat that got me into Linux and software development back in the 90's in the first place, but until the nouveau project has matured perhaps the smarter approach would be to work with NVidia so that their drivers are compatible and play well with SELinux? To me, that would be the common sense approach even though it may violate a philosophy of 100% free and open source code. We do live in a for profit, market based society so it's silly to expect everything to be free and open. If it were, Fedora would never have happened and everyone could still download Red Hat Linux for free.

[AdamW]

It's simply an issue of bad design on the part of the NVIDIA drivers; they do something that's a bad idea, and which SELinux therefore blocks. The fix required here is simply for NVIDIA to make their driver not do that any more. They don't really need any information from us for this.

It would also be up to NVIDIA to design their driver to work sensibly when the nouveau kernel module is present; for instance, unload it in order to load the NVIDIA kernel module, if X is attempting to start up with the NVIDIA driver rather than nouveau.

[linuxdave]

Originally Posted by Hlingler

Yes, of course - perhaps you have not searched the Forum, and have not found the extremely detailed and copious tutorial by Leigh, detailing in every small detail the steps needed to install and enable the proprietary NVidia driver ???

Go to the "Guides and Solutions" section and find it "stickied" near the top of the list. Follow the instructions exactly - no deviations (due to the current problems with RPMFusion packages). If you have previously installed (or attempted to install) the NVidia-supplied binary "blob", you will have to un-install it first (else you'll essentially "double-install" the driver/files, and most likely have problems).

Alternatively: there is another tutorial posted recently in "Guides and Solutions" detailing steps to get the binary blob working (it requires many/all of the same post-install tweaks as the RPMFusion RPMs).

V

Ok so I finally followed Leigh's post http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showpo...69&postcount=1 and got the nVIDIA drivers to install. It was necessary however to follow the very last step labled "If nouveau refuses to die":

su
yum erase xorg-x11-drv-nouveau
mv  /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/drivers/gpu/drm/nouveau/nouveau.ko /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/drivers/gpu/drm/nouveau/nouveau.txt
mv /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r).img /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r)-nouveau.img
dracut /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r).img $(uname -r)

in order to be able to startx.

My resolution at run level 3 however is now 640 X 480. Is there any way to change that? I used nVIDIA's drivers on openSUSE and Ubuntu and had a higher resolution at run level 3...

Thanks

[AdamW]

set a vga= kernel parameter, try vga=788 or vga=791 (er, if the old method still works, not that crazy new format which I can't remember).