On Fri, 2006-10-20 at 15:11 +0200, Matthias Hopf wrote:
I assume that we do not support the 6200 for SL9.3 ourself, as the hardware is pretty new, and 9.3 pretty old. That's why probably there hasn't been an updated driver for 9.3 with working support for the 6200.
I was curious about this, because I'm not good with dates. According to nvidia's press release <http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_16247.html> 6200 boards were available November 2004. I can't immediately find a date for SUSE 9.3 but my copy of the admin manual says 2005. So I don't understand why you call 9.3 old and the 6200 new? Of perhaps more concern, if I'd bought SLES or SLED instead of Pro, does that mean I wouldn't be able to replace a failed graphics card with a current model within the extended support period? I also looked at the SUSE hardware compatibility list. It says there are three types of 6200. All are AGP !? One is apparently my specific model (0x0221). All are stated to have FULL support in 9.3 amd64, but the one that seems to match my configuration most exactly is NOT supported in 10.1. So that seems a good reason to run 9.3! But why am I running 9.3? Start from the premise that I want to minimise maintenance effort - I moved to SUSE from Debian for that reason, as well as others. So I have to have a positive need to upgrade, which I haven't found yet. Plus, from what I can see on this list, 10.1 is not a release that is likely to reduce the effort I have to spend on maintenance. My perception is that it's likely to take more time and be more difficult to manage. With that background, let me refer to an earlier comment:
For the binary driver especially important is the driver version (cat /proc/driver/nvidia/version). If this is older than 8xxx, you probably have to download a newer driver from NVidia and install it yourself. The only thing you absolutely need for that are the kernel sources (don't worry, you don't have to touch them) and gcc (which is probably already installed).
If I understand it though, this creates more work doesn't it? Every time YOU presents me with a new kernel patch, I will have to manually recompile the driver again? And worse, I will have to continually monitor nvidia to see if they release a new version of the driver, which I'll have to update manually. I believe there is a new version with security implications in beta now, for example. I'd much rather have that automatically sorted out by YOU.
The same goes for the nv driver, it is probably too old to work correctly with the 6200. But you can try to use xvidtune to move the displayed screen pane.
Again, the SUSE CDB says it is supported. Regards, Dave