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Nvidia binary blob and libcairo2 1.10+

July 15th, 2012 - 08:00 pm ET by Dan Serban | Report spam
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For those unaware, running wheezy or squeeze + backports while using the
Nvidia binary blob (and in some cases nouveau) drawing _anything_ in X is
painful, it can take seconds to respond to a mouse click, or
minimizing/maximizing a window. Scrolling speed is horrendous as well.

For the months that I've experienced this problem, I've been waiting for
Debian to step up and either find a workaround or fix the issue.

The issue from what I understand stems from libcairo enabling features that
the Nvidia driver blob cannot cope with.

The bug is reported here:

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugr...i?buga6308

Reading through that bug report, it seems that this has been an issue for
some time, a patch is provided and I have successfully upgraded to my own
package which includes the patch.

My question is: Am I alone here? I experience this bug across 50+
workstations which are forced to use the NV blob (squeeze + ION2
platform). On my workstation here, and across a few other machines at
home.

This occurs across different driver versions for the Nvidia binary blob and
across more than two versions of cairo.

Will this bug be fixed for the upcoming wheezy release? I sure hope so, I
haven't had the pleasure of experiencing i386 speeds since the early
nineties but for the last few months I've been there. Nostalgic as it is,
months of frustration and constantly waiting for my computer to respond
(16gb, 8 core, dual 550Ti's) feels like a massive waste of my time.

What steps does one need to take to fix this problem in Debian?


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#1 hvw59601
July 15th, 2012 - 10:00 pm ET | Report spam
Dan Serban wrote:
For those unaware, running wheezy or squeeze + backports while using the
Nvidia binary blob (and in some cases nouveau) drawing _anything_ in X is
painful, it can take seconds to respond to a mouse click, or
minimizing/maximizing a window. Scrolling speed is horrendous as well.

For the months that I've experienced this problem, I've been waiting for
Debian to step up and either find a workaround or fix the issue.

The issue from what I understand stems from libcairo enabling features that
the Nvidia driver blob cannot cope with.

The bug is reported here:

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugr...i?buga6308

Reading through that bug report, it seems that this has been an issue for
some time, a patch is provided and I have successfully upgraded to my own
package which includes the patch.

My question is: Am I alone here?



<snip>

No you are not. I pinned libcairo, easier than patching it.

Hugo


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#2 Dan Serban
July 16th, 2012 - 02:50 am ET | Report spam
On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 20:52:01 -0500
hvw59601 wrote:

Dan Serban wrote:



<snip>

> The bug is reported here:
>
> http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugr...i?buga6308
>
> Reading through that bug report, it seems that this has been an issue
> for some time, a patch is provided and I have successfully upgraded to
> my own package which includes the patch.
>
> My question is: Am I alone here?

<snip>

No you are not. I pinned libcairo, easier than patching it.

Hugo





Sub-optimal and certainly not something I would expect someone who is green
with Debian would know what to even google search in order to fix the
problem.

In my case, I did know the problem existed and was simply awaiting to move
to wheezy on the workstations when it was considered stable. Due to the
packaged iceweasel in squeeze I was forced to use backports due to sites
blocking access to such an old browser and now I find myself tracking a
locally patched package to keep the systems usable.

Why isn't almost everyone freaking out that this hasn't been addressed for
months now? A simple patch or two to the package resolves these issues
across the board. (Meaning, all drivers affected by this change)

No real input from the developer, and no real action has been taken.


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#3 Andrei POPESCU
July 16th, 2012 - 05:40 am ET | Report spam

On Du, 15 iul 12, 23:51:15, Dan Serban wrote:

No real input from the developer, and no real action has been taken.



The developer has quite clearly (IMO) stated his view/intentions[1].
Seems quite reasonable to me given that:

- wheezy is (still in) testing
- the issue is related to the proprietary driver

[1] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugr...=616308#25

Kind regards,
Andrei
Offtopic discussions among Debian users and developers:
http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mail...y-offtopic





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#4 Dan Serban
July 16th, 2012 - 05:50 pm ET | Report spam
On Mon, 16 Jul 2012 12:33:31 +0300
Andrei POPESCU wrote:

On Du, 15 iul 12, 23:51:15, Dan Serban wrote:
>
> No real input from the developer, and no real action has been taken.

The developer has quite clearly (IMO) stated his view/intentions[1].
Seems quite reasonable to me given that:



My bad, the guy that made that statement is not the guy at the top of the
page and missed that comment. The reality is that it seems that this
affects more than the singular nvidia driver, though that's simply google-fu
that may have gone sideways.

- wheezy is (still in) testing
- the issue is related to the proprietary driver



Really, the reasoning is IMHO wrong, it affects 3 levels of
distributions. Squeeze + backports, wheezy .. and sid. Which by its nature
will turn off potential Debian users. No matter who's fault it is. Hence
my rant. I've put up with it so far, but it seems like now (yesterday?)
would be a good time to get the issue resolved.

Doesn't Wheezy going into feature freeze mean that no new versions of the
binary blob would see the light of day in wheezy?

Or rather, maybe this bug should be tagged RC?

[1] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugr...uga6308#25

Kind regards,
Andrei



Thanks Andrei.


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#5 Andrei POPESCU
July 16th, 2012 - 06:00 pm ET | Report spam

On Lu, 16 iul 12, 14:43:54, Dan Serban wrote:
On Mon, 16 Jul 2012 12:33:31 +0300
Andrei POPESCU wrote:

My bad, the guy that made that statement is not the guy at the top of the
page and missed that comment. The reality is that it seems that this
affects more than the singular nvidia driver, though that's simply google-fu
that may have gone sideways.



I couldn't say, didn't research this as all as my system doesn't seem to
be affected.

> - wheezy is (still in) testing
> - the issue is related to the proprietary driver

Really, the reasoning is IMHO wrong, it affects 3 levels of
distributions. Squeeze + backports, wheezy .. and sid. Which by its nature
will turn off potential Debian users. No matter who's fault it is. Hence
my rant. I've put up with it so far, but it seems like now (yesterday?)
would be a good time to get the issue resolved.

Doesn't Wheezy going into feature freeze mean that no new versions of the
binary blob would see the light of day in wheezy?



Exactly.

Or rather, maybe this bug should be tagged RC?

> [1] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugr...=616308#25



I would try a gentle reminder. IMO a good argument for applying the
workaround ASAP would be to get as much testing as possible before the
release ;)

Kind regards,
Andrei
Offtopic discussions among Debian users and developers:
http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mail...y-offtopic





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