[computers] In which I don't really know what I'm doing

[kaberett]

It has been a bit of a saga, this week.

I've been actually using my desktop more: it's better for Playing Portal On, because it's got An Actual Mouse. Because I'm me, it's running Debian testing. Also because I'm me, it's got a Windows install on it that won't let me Do Anything unless I'm connected to the work network, and won't let me connect to the work VPN until I've logged in, and won't let me log in until I've connected to the work network, so I've just not... touched it basically since bringing it home (though, to be fair, I also barely touched it while it was at work, and especially now I've got sebenikela's wine-and-Adobe Digital Editions thing working I have very little call for Windows, at all, ever).

Which means I've been periodically updating it, as one does.

Which means that I had a Grand Old Time earlier this week when nvidia-legacy-340xx-driver=340.108-1 landed and... suddenly my graphical desktop manager was so broken that I couldn't even swap to a tty and try unfucking things from there.

Shenanigans ensued, involving a too-short ethernet cable, once it transpired that it wasn't just me. So I looked at these threads, observed that 340.108-2 hadn't landed in my repositories yet, got grumpy about using non-free, and decided that rather fucking about pinning things to sid I'd just switch to nouveau instead like I ought to have from the beginning, especially given the nvidia legacy driver approaching end-of-life.

On the upside, this more-or-less worked!

... on the downside, apt-get remove --purge nvidia*... also, it transpired, as I eventually worked out, managed to uninstall pretty much all my shit from Steam, which as you may recall was the reason I was using this computer in the first place, ugh.

On the further downside, shortly thereafter I remembered why I'd installed the proprietary drivers in the first place, namely this bug, so for my next trick I need to spend some time trawling through stackoverflow and seeing if state-of-the-art for people who aren't actually Very Computers, i.e. me*, has changed since. (I'd not previously come across the nouveau-specific GRUB parameters, so they're probably worth a try! WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG, apart from all the things detailed in that post that... have gone wrong.)

... I am considering just buying a more recent, non-Nvidia graphics card.

* I will grudgingly concede that I am A Bit Computers, but also I really do not understand most of what is going on here and I mostly just sort of throw things into the black box and see if any of them stick, ever, until they do. I'm mildly impressed I didn't actually end up doing a complete OS reinstall this time round, okay.

(with thanks to vass for my new tag.)

Comments

[me_and]

... Remind me at a point when I'm not already in bed, and I'll see if I don't already have something from AMD that we can swap.

[momijizukamori]

Obligatory XKCD link - and I have had similar experience with the Nvidia drivers on my laptop, though of course I can't remember what combination of trickery I used to fix my issues and get on nouveau the last time I completely fucked them up and ended up with the software thinking my (15" widescreen) display was 800x600.

(also I get paid to Computers and you have described about 50% of my daily routine and probably like 80% of any system upgrade stuff I do, because it turns out low-level Linux debugging is an extremely specific skillset, haha)

[fyreharper]

Oh is THAT why it’s sharks?????

[kaberett]

That is why it's sharks!

[fyreharper]

:D

[azurelunatic]

Remains an *excellent* tag.

[vass]

<3

What a very unfriendly shark.

*reads GRUB-related link then sees the word "modeset" and goes a bit pale and starts sweating* ...yeah, that's about in the same order of magnitude of fun as editing Xorg.conf.

[kaberett]

I don't know what it means in any practical sense so am blithely unconcerned! It's great :-)

[vass]

Me either, I just remember having to do... something involving modesetting during my current system's install process, and that it was ugh.

[kaberett]

(welp, neither nouveau.modeset=0 nor nouveau.blacklist=1 fixed the problem and indeed both made it worse -- couldn't even boot up usefully! -- so I've fiddled around with screensaver settings a little as a rather forlorn hope, and anticipate eventually coming back to have a go at more involved kernel parameters I've seen mentioned in a couple of places now...)

[vass]

Good luck. I can't remember what fixed my modesetting problem, although I do seem to remember that whatever did fix it did not work the first time, but then I turned it off and booted it again without changing anything, and it did work. Here's hoping?

[silveradept]

Nvidia cards and the proprietary drivers work exceedingly well, until they explode, and the explosion is often sudden and catastrophic. Then nouveau happens and there's something that goes slightly sideways. Mine was that nouveau tends to cause sudden and unrecoverable kernel panics, so I had to add a GRUB parameter myself which disables some of the acceleration so as to avoid the panic. Since this system is mostly for web browsing and writing posts, it's not a big loss. Or I would be considering a better card myself for that system.