On 11/22/20 2:20 PM, Carlos E. R. wrote:

On 22/11/2020 18.18, DennisG wrote:

...

I just upgraded a machine to Leap 15.2 only to discover that apparently openSUSE has dropped support for the nvidia 340 driver; it is not in the 15.2 nvidia repo. Yet according to nvidia, the driver supports the 5.3 kernel. The card is a 9800GTX+ - yes it's old but it still works quite well on 15.1.

Can anyone confirm that dropping support for this driver version is intentional, although it is still available for download from nvidia? Since it is not in the repo, I suspect that the download (aka "hard way") version will have the same issue, too.  (And besides, I really really don't want to get on the re-installation merry-go-round.)

I'd like to know before just assuming nouveau is my best (only) option with this card.

Hum! You posted twice.

The hard way depends on what NVidia themselves make available, so if the G03 driver supports the kernel, you have that possibility. Oh, I see Lew comments it isn't.

I hit problems with G03 much earlier than you, with leap 15.0. You can see the problem described on http://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1132952 and has no solution. The problem is the driver does not support libglvnd, and the plan was to drop support for 15.x series. 15.1 had partial support, 15.2 none.

My solution was to buy a new computer with AMD graphics.

Sorry.

Note: If you grep the mail lists (this one, support, and perhaps factory, for that bug number, you may locate other threads with comments on this issue).

This problem should be commented on the Leap 15.2 notes (https://doc.opensuse.org/release-notes/x86_64/openSUSE/Leap/15.2/)

Thanks much to all of you who replied.  I'll try to respond to everyone's posts. I've been using openSUSE/SUSE/SuSE for maybe 20 years now, always with nvidia cards, which IIRC for some years was the only decent choice on Linux.  I apologize if my post did not convey that I am familiar with the "hard way", which as I indicated I have no desire to futz with again. Just to be clear, the 340 is available for download from the nvidia site.  I've got it.  Note that according to nvidia my card is only supported by the 340 driver, not the 390; I don't think that the 390 is simply an upgrade. But also Important is the fact that openSUSE did not carry over the 340.108 driver to 15.2.  (I wasn't concerned about the issue described in the Release Notes as that only applies to secureboot.) I am suspicious that it will not work, as there must be another reason that it was not carried forward.  I haven't seen anything about an issue with libglvnd. Especially because on the Nvidia site it specifically says the 340 driver supports up to the 5.4 kernel, Leap 15 (although not specifically 15.1 or 15.2), and xorg 1.20.  I presume nvidia leaves it to the users to verify it will work with their particular distro/version, even if those primary dependencies are met. Also, I appreciate the suggestions re hardware alternatives; I've been building boxes for a long time, but that is another thing that I don't care to do any longer.  And adding a newer card to this particular machine probably means a new mobo, again not worth it as this is my test/backup/server box where the graphics performance is not critical. I guess it was too much to expect that openSUSE would alert us to it not working on 15.2.  Maybe not including it in the repo was meant to signal that.  I agree however that it should have been included in the Release Notes; being surprised by this during an upgrade is no way to win fans.  In any event, I'll just go with nouveau. Again, thanks for all the helpful replies. --dg P.S.  Carlos, the reason for 2 posts is that I thought the first was not in plain text and so the server would reject it.  Apparently not.  Mea culpa.

On 11/22/20 1:04 PM, Lew Wolfgang wrote:

I ran into this just a couple of days ago after an upgrade from 15.1 to 15.2.

The old 340.108 drivers were left in place, but not used.  Zypper and rpm also showed them.

So I went to nvidia.com to download and install the manual way, but the driver package was missing!  Their finder pointed to it, but it wasn't there.  So maybe we're going to have to wait for Nvidia?

Yes, This is frustrating, but thankfully, with nvidia, the drivers will always be there to be installed (you may have to wait for an nvidia update for kernel or lib or you may have to learn how to build those yourself), but at least there will be a way to build and install the drivers. The problem when distributions like openSUSE drop support is nvidia no longer has any high priority to quickly update the supporting build files, libs, etc.., and there is no longer any communication between the distribution and nvidia regarding what is needed for the driver to run on that distro. The driver itself doesn't change, e.g. nvidia isn't adding anything new to the 340 or 390 drivers, it is just the supporting libraries that go along with the build that must be kept up to date for the driver package to build and install on any distro. If you are not gaming, (and even if you are but running older games) the 8600-9800 models are more than what is needed, and continue to provide all the GPU horsepower needed for the latest highest resolution advanced CAD, etc.. (just not games with all the graphics options dialed up to full) openSUSE isn't alone in this regard, which is sad, because there are a whole lot of these cards out there. The problem this creates is just another instance of the Linux desktop shooting itself in the foot. nvidia drivers for every card are a simple download and install on windows. (now nvidia may intentionally make the web site difficult to navigate to the older drivers, but they are there -- even for the video cards that were made before video cards had fans and used VESA Local Bus -- remember those?) If you have been doing Linux for decades then running into something like this is more a temporary frustration you have learned to expect. If you are new to Linux, or just use Linux and don't build, patch, develop, etc.. than for those, Carlos's answer is the reality, or to download and install on windows. Something Linux swore wouldn't be the case from 2004 on -- but still is.... Now the good news is you can pick up a perfectly fine almost new GTX980 on ebay for ~$160 that are blistering fast and use the current 450 driver. (go for those models that use the single squirrel-cage fan rather than multiple plastic fans -- they last forever) The bad news is they are all 2-case-slot cards now and a lot of times won't fit where the 9800 does. So your options are: 1) Learn to build and install the nvidia drivers manually, which may also require leaning to build and install the libraries, or versions of the libraries needed, or waiting until nvidia updates the supporting packages (I have no idea on what schedule this occurs); 2) Carlos's option or the ebay option for a card that uses the current driver. When buying older models, know the cards, know the GPUs. There are 600 & 700 series cards that out perform the 900 and later cheap models. Rule of thumb, the 60+ versions (last 2-digits, e.g. GTX760, 780, 960, 680) cards provide the top clock-rates and 256bit+ memory interface. The measure of "Memory Bandwidth" is the best general comparison between cards on how they will perform. All GPU and card models are listed at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nvidia_graphics_processing_units Use it. If you do upgrade, make sure the new card will fit where the one you are replace is -- AND that your power supply will support the card, e.g. GTX980 will need a stable 500W power supply that provides a 36A or 38A 12V rail (minimum). 3) The windows option (that's not really an option), but you will find packages for all cards for all versions of windows. This is the real cost of distributions dropping support for older cards. -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.

On 11/23/20 7:35 PM, Simon Lees wrote:

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My understanding is that the 340.108 nvidia driver doesn't support the version of X on 15.2 and is no longer maintained by nvidia. There will be no 340.109. So you like I have to use nouveau with that card and Leap-15.2.

Sucks doesn't it.

Thanks for explaining why this old laptop doesn't work anymore, it was only ever going to be used for kids playing minecraft so I guess ill downgrade it.

The nouveau driver will probably work just fine. You just have to remove the nvidia stuff properly. Mark