On the guides about the Nvidia driver

[Alberto Milone]

First of all let me introduce myself,

My name's Alberto Milone and I'm known as "tseliot" on
ubuntuforums.org. I'm a moderator of that forum and I'm also a member
of the UDSF.

I have moved one of my guides (about the Nvidia driver) from the UDSF
to the official Wiki (I was asked to do that).

Here is the link to my guide:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Latest_Nvidia_Dapper

I have talked to Matthew East and he suggested me to integrate my
guide with the older ones.

My guides encompasses all the guides which were already on the Wiki
and goes even further but it works ONLY on Ubuntu Dapper.


Why didn't I just edit the existing guides?

I didn't do that because I would have had to write them almost from
scratch and I couldn't do that without your permission.



Let me explain things a bit more in detail:

** *BinaryDriverHowto/Nvidia* is the equivalent of Method 1 of my
guide. It has several issues:

1) The command"nvidia-glx-config enable" has a bug which (sometimes)
makes your
xorg.conf unusable:

Sometimes (not always) this happens:
~$ sudo nvidia-glx-config enable

Error: your X configuration has been altered.
This script cannot proceed automatically. If you believe that this
not correct, you can update the md5sum entry executing the following
command:
md5sum /etc/X11/xorg.conf | sudo tee /var/lib/x11/xorg.conf.md5sum
otherwise edit manually /etc/X11/xorg.conf to change the Driver section
from nv to nvidia.

Here is a link to the problem.
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=229901&highlight=nvidia-glx-config

Many users have that problem (I know it since I'm the one who deals
with Nvidia cards on the forum)


Therefore I suggest using nvidia-xconfig (which IMHO is a powerful tool).

A problem arises ( actually it's not a real problem) though.
Nvidia-xconfig is included in nvidia-glx but if you use the legacy
driver (nvidia-glx-legacy) you have to install the package
nvidia-xconfig separately.

2) I do not completely agree with point 6 of that guide which says:

/Find the appropriate module for your kernel. For example, if you have
*linux-image-amd64-k8* installed, then you should install
*linux-restricted-modules-amd64-k8*/.


Installing the dummy package linux-386 (or linux-k8 in the example)
should be a better choice.

And it would be nice warning the users that if they change their
kernel (e.g. and move to the one for 686 of k7) they will need to
install the dummy package also for their new kernel otherwise the
Xserver will crash because the kernel lacks the restricted modules.


3) The users should be warned that whenever the Xserver is updated by
Ubuntu's update they need to reinstall the driver otherwise the opengl
will be broken and the screensavers might send them back to the login
screen when used.



** *NvidiaManual* is the equivalent of Method 2 of my guide:

1) It works on Ubuntu Breezy for sure but it seems not to be taking
into account the
changes in Ubuntu Dapper (namely the Xserver 7.0). The new Xserver
stores its libraries in paths which are (partially) different from the
ones used by the Xserver 6.8.x . In other words the method described on
the Wiki can lead to an Xserver crash or to other malfunctions.

For this reason I suggest to use the following parameter when using
the Nvidia installer:
--x-prefix=/usr/lib/xorg/

Another parameter which should be used (as sometimes the installer
doesn't seem to find the kernel headers) is the following:
--kernel-source-path=/usr/src/kernel-headers-`uname -r`


And of course the guide should also foresee the fact that some users
might use a recompiled kernel. Newer kernels need some additional
tweaking in order to work with the Nvidia installer.


For this reason I suggest to use the following parameter when using
the Nvidia installer:
--x-prefix=/usr/lib/xorg/

2) Another parameter which should be used (as sometimes the installer
doesn't seem to find the kernel headers) is the following:
--kernel-source-path=/usr/src/kernel-headers-`uname -r`


3) And of course the guide should also foresee the fact that some
users might use a recompiled kernel. Newer kernels need some
additional tweaking in order to work with the Nvidia installer.


I'll stop here since my purpose is not that of boring you to death.



Just another thing:
The "*Problems Section*" of my guide encompasses many fixes for some
known bugs of the Nvidia driver and/or of Ubuntu. It contains also the
settings to use for certain graphic cards (geforce go, etc.)



I don't mean to bash who wrote the original guides. They have all my
esteem since I know that writing and maintaining the documentation is
not an easy task, especially when things continually evolve.

I would also like to point out that my guide is not only the result of
my work. The users who I helped provided me with enough feedback to
improve and enhance my guide. This is the power of the community.



Now back to the problem. What do you think I should do?

Should I keep my guide as it is or should I write the existing guides
from scratch?


Please share your thoughts.

Regards

Alberto