X failure after upgrade to Meerkat (Ubuntu 10.10)

[Joshua Judson Rosen]

Bruce Labitt <bruce.labitt at myfairpoint.net> writes:
>
> On 10/19/2010 8:02 PM, Joshua Judson Rosen wrote:
> >
> > Did you try xserver-xorg-video-nv? If neither that nor nouveau works,
> > and if your `old' machine is old enough to still have PCI slots be
> > acceptible for a graphics card, I could probably give you a 3dfx card
> > that would still work....
> >
> > I haven't actually used it myself in a couple of years
> > (which is like forever, in terms of Ubuntu releases),
> > but the driver appears to sill be live:
> >
> >      http://packages.ubuntu.com/maverick/xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
> >
> > I also have an ATI Radeon 9250 (also PCI) which I'm pretty sure is
> > still supported (by the FOSS drivers--dunno about the proprietary ones,
> > I never found a reason to try them), and which I might be willing
> > to part with, though I've been considering using it myself
> > as a replacement for an old inbuilt card that seems to be acting up....
>
> Sorry for this obvious question.  How does one change the 
> active driver?  Just edit xorg.conf and put in nv?  What if 
> there isn't an active xorg.conf?  I renamed it so it would 
> not be used.  (What DOES X use if there is no xorg.conf?)

Well, the first step would be ensuring that the xserver-xorg-video-nv
package is actually installed--if everything's working right,
and I guess if you don't also have some other driver that claims
to support the card, presumably nv should just be used automatically?

My own xorg.conf files, for all of the machines that I have on-hand
right now are gargantuan and byzantine by today's standards
(`... because my needs are big [and complicated]'); I'm not sure,
off the top of my head, how to cut it down to something minimalistic....

> Does nv support the GeForce 2 MX/MX400?  That video card is 
> listed by Nvidia now as legacy.

I'm not sure what "MX400" means, but the manpage mentions "GeForce2 MX":

    http://xorg.freedesktop.org/archive/X11R7.0/doc/html/nv.4.html

Looks like there are a few open bugs in Ubuntu:

    https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-nv/+bugs

... but it's gotta be worth a try if you've got nothing now, right? ;)

> I may take you up on the video card offer.  Naturally I need 
> to flail and froth about a bit before I give up!  Wouldn't 
> be right without a little suffrin'

I'll go dig around to make sure that I really do still have that
3dfx card... :)

-- 
"Don't be afraid to ask (λf.((λx.xx) (λr.f(rr))))."