[mythtvnz] 18.04.1 upgrade and old Nvidia drivers

[Daniel Hughes]

I haven't used a rolling distro before, but would that actually help,
do they maintain compatibility for everything forever or would a
rolling release just mean that a routine update could drop support for
your graphics card. Which kind of seems worse to me.
On Wed, Aug 15, 2018 at 5:57 PM Stephen Worthington
<stephen_agent at jsw.gen.nz> wrote:
>
> On Wed, 15 Aug 2018 17:51:57 +1200, you wrote:
>
> >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.
> >
> >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.
>
> A rolling distro would not help.  What is needed is a distro that has
> someone who is willing to do the patching required to make the drivers
> compile against later kernels.  But even that has its limits - once
> the kernels change enough that there need to be fixes in the binary
> blob parts of the Nvidia drivers, there is no way to fix that without
> Nvidia doing it.
>
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