[01:12] <Sven_vB> what are the major factors influencing how some graphics cards are supported-by-default for epic times and others for some fewer years?
[01:14] <daftykins> do you have an example of something you claim was supported for a short span?
[01:16] <Sven_vB> nah, I wouldn't call either timespan "short". one card that works nicely in Xenial is my [AMD/ATI] 264VT [Mach64 VT] (rev 40). cards I've problems with are nVidia GT216 [GeForce GT 220] (rev a2) and G72 [GeForce 7200 GS / 7300 SE] (rev a1).
[01:17] <daftykins> using noveau against those nvidia cards?
[01:17] <Sven_vB> nope, couriously resolution got worse when/as long as I had nouveau-firmware installed.
[01:19] <Sven_vB> I'm less hoping for a fix for the old card but rather some guidelines for what to look out for when I'll buy some new graphics card in a few weeks.
[01:19] <daftykins> nouveau being the open source driver, i'd actually be aiming to say that you should only be using the proprietary driver for best support
[01:20] <daftykins> well, what have you been experiencing... as issues?
[01:21] <daftykins> use-case is pretty top on understanding which cards you should aim for
[01:22] <daftykins> i.e. i have no idea what you do or use your computer(s) for :D
[01:23] <Sven_vB> mostly text editors, sometimes a bit of gaming, rather low-end on the 3D power, so I aim to for cards that will be supported for a long time. also I prefer ones with no moving parts, if that's even an option today.
[01:24] <daftykins> yeah we call those passive cards
[01:25] <daftykins> the AMD Mach64 you mention is some ancient museum piece - and the nvidia ones are old sure, but i don't see why they'd give any issues on the desktop for the most part - so an example would be good
[01:27] <Sven_vB> I didn't write down the exact resolutions, but my gut's estimate is 1280x900-ish w/o nouveau and 800x600-ish after I installed nouveau-firmware.
[01:28] <daftykins> are you specifically avoiding the nvidia proprietary driver for some reason?
[01:30] <Sven_vB> just the comfort of the illusion that in theory, I could have all of my software audited. :)
[01:31] <daftykins> that's ridiculous
[01:32] <Sven_vB> yeah. the real reason is probably more about laziness, whether there are extra steps required after the Ubuntu install.
[01:32] <daftykins> a single package install
[01:33] <daftykins> there's even the hardware drivers program that suggests one click installs of a recommended driver for your given hardware
[01:34] <Sven_vB> is this going towards a conclusion that the differences in support timespan are just about whether the drivers are shipped by default?
[01:35] <daftykins> nouveau is a reverse engineered driver, my understanding is that the devs try to make things work as much as possible by just hacking away at it and trying things - this means some cards may work better than others
[01:35] <daftykins> why anyone would knowingly hamstring themselves to running their own hardware worse for the sake of, at best, 'principles' regarding the code they run, is beyond my comprehension
[01:36] <daftykins> especially if you don't read every single line of source to the kernel and every program you are making use of right now
[01:38] <daftykins> i'd rather take a stab at why the resolutions are wrong, be it down to driver or bugs in being old VGA attached monitors... as is often the way
[01:41] <daftykins> essentially, doing what you're doing now... you can't buy anything that'll last, because anything new will have bad support under nouveau - and anything old may've been dropped by nvidia
[01:41] <daftykins> is all that making sense?
[01:41] <Sven_vB> well, plugging in another card is easier than doing a web search about which driver package to install. :) I'll still do the latter now since none of my cards work sufficiently well out of the box. (the ATI has wrong aspect ration on all available resolutions.) it just got me curious about what makes those differences. nouveau having to rev.engineer it sounds like nVidia doesn't like to share lots of technical details. does ATI
[01:41] <Sven_vB> do that better? is that why their cards worked easier for me?
[01:42] <daftykins> no AMD are far, far worse for driver hassles
[01:42] <daftykins> the card you have is a museum piece, how to draw a picture hasn't changed much for that, so it's supported well
[01:43] <daftykins> you say search online, but i've already explained there's a feature built into ubuntu that'll recommend the right driver
[01:44] <Sven_vB> yeah I'd have to search for that feature as well, looks like some of my customization stuff hid that wizard away.
[01:44] <daftykins> use an app searcher in your desktop and start typing 'driver' and see what comes up
[01:45] <Sven_vB> "how to draw a picture hasn't changed much for that" <-- that was my thinking, thus I'd have expected to get at least slow 2D graphics in a somewhat useful resolution even for less-supported cards with nouveau.
[01:45] <daftykins> nope
[01:46] <daftykins> put it this way, when the GTX 750 Ti and GTX 970 came out... nvidia did something different - and ubuntu wouldn't even boot with systems that had those cards in
[01:46] <Sven_vB> eww
[01:46] <daftykins> a kernel boot parameter had to be passed, "nomodeset", to even display a desktop because at the time nouveau didn't support them
[01:47] <Sven_vB> oh yeah I remember, that was quite a pain.
[01:47] <daftykins> big headache in the support channels, yeah
[01:48] <Sven_vB> btw yes the "you can't buy anything that'll last" totally made sense for the nVidia cards. and still you say ATI has even worse problems? did I just have lots of lucky picks in the past then?
[01:49] <daftykins> i disagree with that being true of nvidia, because again you're only judging function by not knowing how to run the proper drivers for your hardware to make it run correctly to begin with
[01:50] <daftykins> it's AMD btw, they bought ATI many many years ago so ATI no longer exists
[01:51] <Sven_vB> ah ok. do AMD share their tech details more freely? haven't heard of reverse-engineered ATI drivers yet… or is it just nobody was willing to invest the effort?
[01:52] <daftykins> the 'radeon' driver was the old open source driver for AMD cards, it's highly likely that's what's in use with the model you mentioned earlier
[01:53] <daftykins> now AMD are working on their own open source driver, known as 'amdgpu' which killed off a huge number of cards, by not supporting them at all
[01:53] <Sven_vB> the Mach64 VT uses atyfb according to lspci
[01:54] <daftykins> should be quite clear from /var/log/Xorg.0.log too - although i think that file location has been moved now
[01:54] <daftykins> if that really is the driver in use, then that's some framebuffer technique that is as basic as it gets
[01:55] <Sven_vB> yeah, and it works pretty well. I could probably even tell my screen OSD to add black borders right and left, to fix the aspect ratio.
[01:56] <daftykins> let me guess, VGA cable? :)
[01:56] <Sven_vB> yes
[01:57] <daftykins> 90% of your problems will come from holding onto that antiquated tech
[01:57] <daftykins> digital is just better (DVI, HDMI, displayport, etc)
[01:57] <daftykins> if it were working properly you'd have the native resolution and wouldn't have to mess about with anything
[01:58] <Sven_vB> unfortunately the Mach64 doesn't have any non-VGA ports
[01:58] <daftykins> no, because it's a museum piece
[01:59] <daftykins> is the rest of your hardware old too?
[01:59] <daftykins> grep -i model /proc/cpuinfo
[02:01] <Sven_vB> it's mixed. I the PC where I use that Mach64 in is actually rather new, the CPU and RAM are rather insane for my usual tasks.
[02:03] <Sven_vB> does the fact that AMD develops an open source driver mean they're more close to the idea of free software, than nVidia is?
[02:04] <daftykins> seems a lot like you're still chasing down the wrong path to me
[02:06] <Sven_vB> any card that I'll buy nowadays will probably be hugely overpowered for my use, so why not consider ethical aspects in the choice?
[02:06] <daftykins> if you have a modern enough card to be supported, then once their open driver works properly and has all the features the properietary one (fglrx) used to, then it'll be good, but i don't think they're there yet
[02:06] <daftykins> i've already said my piece on that, knowingly making something run worse because you don't agree with the idea of a closed driver - is insanity
[02:07] <daftykins> that aside, allegedly nvidia will be a bad choice for Wayland when the day eventually comes that it's the default (not for a while)
[02:09] <Sven_vB> even if I were to install proprietary drivers (like fglrx temporarily), I should still think about what vendor strategies to reward economically.
[02:09] <Sven_vB> will read about Wayland :)
[02:19] <Sven_vB> anyway, thanks for your thoughts. I'll have another try getting the GT216 to work now. :) maybe I can even defer buying the new card then.
[02:24] <Bashing-om> Sven_vB: See: http://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3142/~/support-timeframes-for-unix-legacy-gpu-releases .
[02:25] <Sven_vB> woah! looks like nouveau just flinched from the VGA! now via HDMI, it's actually rendering 1280x1024 as well.
[02:25] <Sven_vB> Bashing-om, thanks!
[02:25] <daftykins> :) VGA is horrible
[02:26] <daftykins> often there are bugs which makes the cards fail to receive the EDID info from the monitor, so the settings are set wrong
[02:27] <Sven_vB> yeah, I wish xrandr would accept "just use that anyway I don't mind whether the screen will look strange" like back in Win98 times
[02:38] <Sven_vB> daftykins, the tool you meant which should have made it easy to install the proprietary drivers, probably was software-properties-gtk. it had no options for me earlier, when the card was connected via VGA. now via HDMI, it does indeed suggest two packages.
[02:40] <daftykins> i couldn't name it because i don't use ubuntu desktop - and it's been too long since i did know the name :)
[02:41] <daftykins> what are you being offered, then? and i hope we're talking about one of the nvidia cards
[02:45] <Sven_vB> yeah, I'm trying the GT216 again. unfortunately I can't copy the text from that wizard. too haughty to retype it though, I'll find another way to get those suggestions. will have to get them text-based anyway if I want to teach puppet to deal with them.
[02:48] <daftykins> screenshot...
[02:48] <daftykins> no point automating what's different on a case by case basis
[05:46] <lotuspsychje> good morning to all
[05:49] <lotuspsychje> 91mb bionic updates :p
[07:22] <ducasse> good morning, all
[07:39] <lotuspsychje> hey ducasse
[07:40] <lotuspsychje> gtg lots todo today
[07:40] <lotuspsychje> ttyl guys
[08:34] <EriC^^> morning all
[11:01] <BluesKaj> Hi folks
[11:21] <EriC^^> hey BluesKaj
[11:27] <BluesKaj> Hi EriC^^
[20:50] <pauljw> hi everyone