Ugly boot splash - ati or nvidia drivers <Work Around>

[oshunluvr]

I just spent a day and a half installing the new release. It took forever because the repos were sloooooooow.

Anyway, I installed the nvidia latest driver via jockey and boy does it look horrible. The desktop background is visibly grainy (I'm using my own image) and the terminal font is actually blurry.

These opinions are when comparing it to my 9.10 install using the same nvidia driver and same xorg.conf.

I haven't spent any time researching the problem because I'm using 9.10 instead. I think I'll be waiting another month before I try it again.

I wondered if anyone else is having the same issue or knows a "magic bullet" that might fix it before I wipe it and re-install.

[tweev]

Re: Fresh install - bad first impressions - xorg or nvidia drivers??

I'm a total noob so take this with a salt lick. I had had the same problem and I used the NVIDIA X Server setting (I can't remember how that got there is my settings menu) to sort things out. I was surprised it detected everything and everything went from grainy to awesome.

[dibl]

Re: Fresh install - bad first impressions - xorg or nvidia drivers??

Alt-F2 "kdesudo nvidia-settings" ?

[oshunluvr]

Re: Fresh install - bad first impressions - xorg or nvidia drivers??

Yeah well, I'm an experienced nvidia user. I can and have used nvidia-settings but the GUI interface doesn't have enough capability to do the edits I desire, so I rarely use it except to get information.

As I said, I'm using the exact same xorg.conf file and the same nvidia overclock (coolbits) settings in 9.10 and 10.04. I was just surprised to see the degraded look in 10.04.

The only obvious difference I've discovered so far is there is no /etc/dbus-1/system.d/xorg-server.conf file in the new install. But the settings in there aren't (or at least don't appear so) related to presentation but rather screen control.

According to xdpyinfo I have the same resolution and DPI. One thing I haven't checked is scan freqs - which I will do next time I boot into 10.04. The screens default correctly in 9.10 but maybe the xorg-server in 10.04 is behaving differently.

I'll try and follow up with some screen shots to see if it shows up enough to see that way, but the difference is very obvious if you're sitting in front of it. I may also try a second install without doing my usual edits to see what, if any differences that reveals.

In case any one is following this thread, here's my xorg.conf Device section settings:

Section "Device"
  Identifier   "Device0"
  Driver     "nvidia"
  VendorName   "NVIDIA Corporation"
  BoardName   "GeForce 8800 GT"
  Option     "Coolbits" "1"
  Option "TripleBuffer" "True"
  Option "UseCompositeWrapper" "True"
#        + Enables the X server's composite wrapper instead of the builtin one. 
  Option "AllowIndirectPixmaps" "True"
#        + Could improve hardware rendering on G80+ cards with more than 256 MB of video memory. 
  Option "BackingStore" "True"
#        + Cache overlayed areas in case they get redisplayed later 
  Option "PixmapCacheSize" "200000"
#        + allocate said number of pixels for pixmap caches 
  Option "OnDemandVBlankInterrupts" "True"
#        + only fire VBlank interrupts in modes where they are needed

Here's my settings in Xsession:

nvidia-settings -a "[gpu:0]/GPUOverclockingState=1" -a "[gpu:0]/GPU2DClockFreqs=705,1050" -a "[gpu:0]/GPU3DClockFreqs=705,1050"
nvidia-settings -a InitialPixmapPlacement=2 -a GlyphCache=1

[doctordruidphd]

Re: Fresh install - bad first impressions - xorg or nvidia drivers??

One thing you might try, just as an experiment, is to move your xorg.conf out of the way, and use the nvidia-xconfig utility to generate a bare-bones xorg.conf, and see if that gives you any changes.

Also, be sure you are booting with the 'nomodeset' kernel option, as the nvidia drivers don't coexist with mode setting.

[oshunluvr]

Re: Fresh install - bad first impressions - xorg or nvidia drivers??

So I rebooted into 10.04 and it looks a bit better. Now the background image appearance is only very slightly different - not enough to complain about.

The only software difference I can locate is a difference in the xorg server version;

9.10 = 1.6.4 (10604000)
10.04 = 1.7.6 (10706000)

I suspect the monitor refresh rate varied or changed. It reports normal now (60hz). If it happens again, I'll just go back to manually setting my refresh rates - like the "old" days - in linux kernel time that's like, six months

The terminal font blurriness issue has to be the default fonts so I'm going to play around there a bit. Odd - another "missing" file (10.04 from 9.10) is the /etc/X11/FS directory and the config file it contained for fonts. Another mystery...

BTW: Thanks guys for your responses.

[oshunluvr]

Re: Fresh install - bad first impressions - xorg or nvidia drivers??

One thing you might try, just as an experiment, is to move your xorg.conf out of the way, and use the nvidia-xconfig utility to generate a bare-bones xorg.conf, and see if that gives you any changes.

Also, be sure you are booting with the 'nomodeset' kernel option, as the nvidia drivers don't coexist with mode setting.

As I reported above, the second reboot helped for some reason - I'll look into this issue.

I do have set my mode set in the xorg.conf because I'm using twinview.

[doctordruidphd]

Re: Fresh install - bad first impressions - xorg or nvidia drivers??

I do have set my mode set in the xorg.conf because I'm using twinview.

For clarification, I was referring to using the nomodeset kernel option while booting. That is a separate issue from the mode setting in xorg.conf.

When you get your grub boot menu, highlight the entry you want to boot, hit e for edit, and make sure the kernel line contains the nomodeset option, something like this:

linux  /vmlinuz root=UUID=f46c4955-3e0a-4069-92ec-8c2b4655e481 ro nomodeset

Sorry if I didn't make that clear.

[oshunluvr]

Re: Fresh install - bad first impressions - xorg or nvidia drivers??

Yeah - got cha...

On a side note - the boot splash went from beautiful to horrible along with the other issues. Must be a resolution issue in KDM

[doctordruidphd]

Re: Fresh install - bad first impressions - xorg or nvidia drivers??

The plymouth boot splash stuff is designed to work with kernel mode setting, as is nouveau. The nvidia proprietary drivers are incompatible with kms. So it winds up being one or the other.

[oshunluvr]

Re: Fresh install - bad first impressions - xorg or nvidia drivers??

Thanks for the info Doc - too bad because I liked the way it looked...

Maybe I'll build a KDM theme that looks similar.

[aiiee]

Re: Fresh install - bad first impressions - xorg or nvidia drivers??

The plymouth boot splash stuff is designed to work with kernel mode setting, as is nouveau. The nvidia proprietary drivers are incompatible with kms. So it winds up being one or the other.

so this is what makes the 'kubuntu' bluish bootscreen appear in like 8 colors at at something like 200x400 resolution when we use the nvidia drivers? So it is up to Nvidia to update their drivers?

[Teunis]

Re: Fresh install - bad first impressions - xorg or nvidia drivers??

I run the NVIDIA 195.36.15 driver and get a nicely rendered boot, but only since the RC, before it was indeed very low res.
btw, the fastest way to download a new CD or DVD is to use the torrents and yes you can upgrade using the disk.

[oshunluvr]

Re: Fresh install - bad first impressions - xorg or nvidia drivers??

I run the NVIDIA 195.36.15 driver and get a nicely rendered boot, but only since the RC, before it was indeed very low res.
btw, the fastest way to download a new CD or DVD is to use the torrents and yes you can upgrade using the disk.

Just so we're all clear - the boot splash I'm referring to is the default kubuntu in lucid which I installed from the alternate install cd. Karmic works perfectly.

Also: the gripe about slow repos referred to updates and adding in software AFTER the install, not downloading the .iso and I disagree about torrents beings faster. That's usual only true if the server is throttling the bandwidth or is slow. You can select a high-bandwidth server and download the iso in a few minutes if you have a speedy connection like mine (25/25mps fios)

[Teunis]

Re: Fresh install - bad first impressions - xorg or nvidia drivers??

On one computer I did a fresh install from the Alternate CD and the resulting boot splash was exactly the same as the one from the long upgrade path on my main computer.
The first has Intel graphics, the latter NVIDIA.

oshunluvr, I thought you meant to have a very slow D/L from the repo's due to the present upgrade cycle, in such a case doing the main upgrade from a different source like a torrent could be beneficial. For me the incoming torrents were at the max. for my 16/1 line.
(And I will keep seeding for at least a week more)

Since the release of Lucid I have seen very few updates, and then mainly from the daily PPA's.