[NCLUG] Ubuntu Video Issues

[Brian Wood]

On Wednesday 06 January 2010 08:34:19 pm Stephen Warren wrote:
> Brian Wood wrote:
> > On Wednesday 06 January 2010 04:29:19 pm Myles Bostwick wrote:
> >> I'm running Ubuntu 9.10 though I had this problem with Hardy as well.
> >> After a varied amount of time, my video memory gets corrupted.
> >> ...
> >>
> >> Some Information:
> >> - I'm running the Nvidia Proprietary driver version 185 [Recommended]
> >> - Gnome version 2.28.1
> >> - Compiz 0.8.4 (if not enabled, the problem seems to go away, though
> >> may just take longer to happen)
> >> - My video card is an nvidia Quardro FX 550 rev a2
> >
> > The 185 drivers are known to be problematic, at least that's what the
> > folks on the MythTV mailing list say, though this may be mainly related
> > to using VDPAU for video decoding.
> 
> Hmm. I'm not aware of any particular issues that make 185 worse than any
> other driver series overall, and I would be, given I write part of them.

If I recall correctly, there was some issue with memory usage, it caused 
problems with video cards with under 512MB, and cleared up with the 190 
drivers. This was all related to using VDPAU.

Of course the reports may not be totally accurate. That's the problem with 
user reports sometimes, the reporting party makes assumptions and fails to 
mention significant factors (like "I changed the drivers and it worked", but 
they fail to mention they changed cards or the kernel at the same time).