[mythtvnz] 18.04.1 upgrade and old Nvidia drivers

[Curtis Walker]

On Wed, 15 Aug 2018 at 17:07, Stephen Worthington
<stephen_agent at jsw.gen.nz> wrote:
>
> I just got the notification today that I can upgrade my MythTV box
> from Ubuntu 16.04 to 18.04.1.  But in researching and testing the
> upgrade, I have come across a serious problem for boxes that are using
> old Nvidia drivers, like my mother's.  Her box needs the Nvidia 304
> series drivers, which are no longer supported by Nvidia:
>
> https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3142/~/support-timeframes-for-unix-legacy-gpu-releases
>
> As a result of the support having been dropped, the 304 drivers
> apparently do not compile against the 4.15 series kernels used in
> 18.04.1, and as a result of that, Ubuntu has dropped the Nvidia 304
> driver packages.  There are web pages that tell you how to install the
> 304 drivers by downloading them from Nvidia and patching them before
> installing.  I have not tried this yet, and it will certainly
> complicate doing kernel updates, unless I can work out how to automate
> it using DKMS.
>
> The implications for doing an 18.04.1 upgrade are also nasty.  You
> will probably need to remove the Nvidia drivers and switch back to the
> Nouveau drivers before doing the upgrade.  The Nouveau drivers have
> now got VDPAU support, but I have not tried using them with MythTV.
> Last I heard, a couple of years ago, Nouveau+VDPAU did not work as
> well with MythTV as it should.  But it would be worth trying again now
> to see if it was OK - if so, that might be the best path forwards for
> MythTV boxes with old Nvidia cards.
>
> This same problem will hit users of Nvidia cards using the 340 drivers
> (such as my GT 220 cards) at the end of 2019 when Nvidia stops support
> for them also.  Nvidia seems to be thinking that all its older GPUs
> are no longer being used.  That may well be the case for video cards
> with fans, but my fanless ones, and my mother's motherboard builtin
> GPU, are still going just fine after more than 8 years 24/7.
>
> _______________________________________________
> mythtvnz mailing list
> mythtvnz at lists.ourshack.com
> https://lists.ourshack.com/mailman/listinfo/mythtvnz
> Archives http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/mythtvnz/

Nasty. Perhaps a reason to switch to a rolling distro, such as Arch
linux? Although in the past year I've also had to relegate my GTX460
to legacy 390xx-series drivers, which was a pain at the time.