Incompatible Restricted drivers offered for Legacy Nvidia Cards

Severity high, since this breaks people's boxes, and we prominently advertise those drivers right after installation.

This is particularly worrysome because nvidia-common still pulls in nvidia-96-modaliases and nvidia-71-modaliases. It might be a requirement for the transition away from those to nv in update-manager, so I don't think we should drop them now.

Fixed package uploaded, waiting in unapproved queue now.

http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-core-dev/jockey/ubuntu/revision/279

This bug was fixed in the package jockey - 0.5~beta3-0ubuntu5

---------------
jockey (0.5~beta3-0ubuntu5) intrepid; urgency=low

  * Merge bug fix from trunk:
    - nvidia.py: Drop constructor check for unsupported legacy versions; at
      ctor invocation time, the package is not set yet, and this check
      should not be upstream in the first place.
    - detection.py: Do not instantiate handlers from DriverDBs which are
      unavailable. (Pre-requisite for fixing LP #288662)
  * data/handlers/nvidia.py: Move test for currently unsupported legacy
    versions (96, 71) to available() where it is actually evaluated.
    (LP: #288662)

 -- Martin Pitt <email address hidden> Fri, 24 Oct 2008 13:43:22 +0200

I know this bug is now resolved and this might not be the right place for this comment but it's related.

Is there going to be a more indepth warning to those using legacy chipsets about the problems involved with upgrading to Intrepid?

GL things I took for granted were compiz and avant-window-navigator. Also the nv driver seems to be very unfriendly towards switching users in X which is something I do often but now I find it works once then after that I need to reboot to get it to work.

I think users need to be warned that by upgrading there is a lot they take for granted that will not work correctly. They may have to reconfigure X, they may have to change how their desktop is setup (i'm back to using gnome-panel). They might not be able to easily have multiple desktop users.

I'm now having to decide between buying a new graphics card or moving back to hardy.

This is clearly nvidia's problem but the first place users will come when their new upgrade doesn't work properly will be here, forums and irc.

Apologies if this has already been addressed, as far as I can tell there is no way I can see what the current warning to users is.

Alex Stansfield [2008-10-28 6:25 -0000]:
> Is there going to be a more indepth warning to those using legacy
> chipsets about the problems involved with upgrading to Intrepid?

Yes, update-manager will tell you about the problem if your card only
works with the legacy drivers (which aren't working in intrepid). If
you still choose to upgrade, it will transition your X.org to nv.

> I'm now having to decide between buying a new graphics card or moving
> back to hardy.

That's unfortunately what it comes down to, unless you can get along
with the nv driver. At least hardy is an LTS, so it will be supported
on the desktop for another 2.5 years.

In addition: Do we warn about dual monitor setups?
(I don't believe nv supports them)

I'm aware of the warning given by Update Manager, I received it when I upgraded.

However from what I remember it really doesn't let the user know just how much functionality they will lose by moving to the nv driver.

All I'm saying is that perhaps the warning should give more detail to the user so they know the level of what wont work and they can make a more informed decision about whether to upgrade.

I'm just trying to save the guys at Ubuntu from the headache of a couple of days of users complaining that X feature no longer works when it's not Ubuntu's fault in the first place.

Thanks for your bugrpeort.

The current text in update-manager is:

_("Upgrading may reduce desktop "
   "effects, and performance in games "
   "and other graphically intensive "
   "programs."),
_("This computer is currently using "
    "the NVIDIA 'nvidia' "
     "graphics driver. "
     "No version of this driver is "
     "available that works with your "
     "video card in Ubuntu "
     "8.10.\n\nDo you want to continue?"))

Its not ideal to change the wording at this point because this would break the translations for those strings.

Thanks for the update.

I had a feeling it was a little close to launch day for any change but thought I should mention it.

Also affect me on 10.04 ... the problem seams came from modinfo ...

jockey.log report that:
--- WARNING: modinfo for module nvidia failed: ERROR: modinfo: could not find module nvidia

by shell i trye that :
                               modinfo nvidia

.... continue from the previous comment ... sorry :)

by shell i tried that :
                               modinfo nvidia
Output:
                              ERROR: modinfo: could not find module nvidia

While "modinfo nvidia-current" works well ...

so i think it is an "alias" problem ... i hope that this help as i see that this bug is very old (2008)