[arch-general] regression in nouveau ?

[Philipp Überbacher]

Excerpts from fons's message of 2010-05-26 00:32:22 +0200:
> On Mon, May 24, 2010 at 11:42:54PM +0200, Xavier Chantry wrote:
> 
> > Never heard of similar regression before.
> > Can you try using
> > http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?K=kernel26-nouveau-git
> > and
> > http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?K=xf86-video-nouveau-git
> > ?
> 
> Would that be possible at all, given
> 
>   24.3.2010 posted by xavier
>   Merge of 2.6.34-rc2. 
>   On Monday, nouveau git tree went straight from 2.6.32 to 2.6.34-rc2.
>   One backlight API change in 2.6.34-rc2 breaks compatibility with older
>   kernels (< 2.6.34-rc2), so people doing out-of-tree builds will have to
>   update their kernel to rc2. Alternatively, you could try to revert the
>   backlight commit.
> 
> The last thing I want is to get entangled in a recursive
> 'update to the latest' game.
> 
> I tried the inverse today - downgrading nouveau to the version
> used on the machines that do work. Same problem, the older 
> version wants a kernel < 2.6.33, and gods knows where things
> will end if I go that route.
> 
> This is not about hacking and having fun with bleeding edge 
> versions. Apart from the machine that doesn't work (and I
> don't expect anything more than what all distros since a 
> year or two have been able to provide OOTB), there's 9000
> Euro of audio hardware sitting idle. 
> 
> I don't mind having to tweak things, do a lot of configuration
> manually, etc. etc., but I do expect things to work when they
> go into core/extra, or at least have a fallback available.
> There is none, AFAICS.
> 
> Ciao,

As someone else suggested, I'd try the nv driver. It's generally worse
than nouveau in its graphics performance, but it's usable. It's what has
been used for years by those who didn't want to use the proprietary
nvidia driver. It used to work o.k. for me with regards to audio, but I
never used very low frame settings (never under 128). The proprietary
driver is also an option but it used to perform worse with regards to
audio than nv. Mileage seems to vary with every version.

The other option I see is trying to duplicate the setup you have on your
other machines. The packages should be in pacmans cache. There may be an
automatic or semi-automatic way to do this.
Then I'd test new kernel/nouveau versions and see whether the situation
improves.

Sadly audio performance / locks /latency seems to be not on graphics driver developers
minds at all.
-- 

Regards,
Philipp

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"Wir stehen selbst enttäuscht und sehn betroffen / Den Vorhang zu und alle Fragen offen." Bertolt Brecht, Der gute Mensch von Sezuan