A well support mult-monitor video card for Linux??

D

Dr. Righteous

2[H]4U
Joined
Aug 1, 2007
Messages
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What I need is a 4 DVI output video card for my linux workstation.
Not 1 Dvi + 1 HDMI + 2 display ports. I need all DVIs, and I dont' want to use a bunch of adapters to cause flaky issues down the road.

There are a few cards on the market I'm finding but I'm seeing HD7750 based cards which have very poor support on linux. HD 7xxx cards don't have ANY OEM support for linux and Xorg support is POOR on these.

If anyone is running a quad setup, I would like to hear about it. I need to find something that works and will be reliable.
 
I'd think with newer kernels (4.10/4.11/4.12) HD7750 should be well suipported directly by drivers included with the kernel.

OEMS just re-package the AMD/NVIDIA drivers...they don't usually do anything special.

I'm pretty sure even my HD6850/6870 are pretty well supported as well.

With all that being said I don't have any experience with a 4 DVI card. Would 2, 2 DVI cards work as well? I might be able to test that for you if you are interested...

Also: is it safe to assume you do NOT need top shelf 3d performance? Is this just for 2D? Do you need h.265 acceleration or h.264 ? etc....

Edit: This would probably work fine for basic 2d: https://www.amazon.com/dp/b004ju260o/?tag=extension-kb-20
 
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Dr. Righteous said:
What I need is a 4 DVI output video card for my linux workstation.
Not 1 Dvi + 1 HDMI + 2 display ports. I need all DVIs, and I dont' want to use a bunch of adapters to cause flaky issues down the road.

There are a few cards on the market I'm finding but I'm seeing HD7750 based cards which have very poor support on linux. HD 7xxx cards don't have ANY OEM support for linux and Xorg support is POOR on these.

If anyone is running a quad setup, I would like to hear about it. I need to find something that works and will be reliable.
Click to expand...

What are you going to do with it? The AMDGPU or AMDGPU-PRO drivers support the 7750 just fine especially with kernel 4.10 or greater. X.org typically doesn't matter with the opensource driver. Spinning that up and making it run on an Arch based distro would trivial. And the AMDGPU gets pretty damn good 3D performance nowadays. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/AMDGPU

Spinning it up on say something Ubuntu based would just take a tiny bit of extra work to make sure it's AMDGPU and not the old -ati open source driver.

If you need proprietary drivers that's a whole different ballgame in which case I'd be going Nvidia.
 
/dev/null said:
I'd think with newer kernels (4.10/4.11/4.12) HD7750 should be well supported directly by drivers included with the kernel.

OEMS just re-package the AMD/NVIDIA drivers...they don't usually do anything special.

I'm pretty sure even my HD6850/6870 are pretty well supported as well.

With all that being said I don't have any experience with a 4 DVI card. Would 2, 2 DVI cards work as well? I might be able to test that for you if you are interested...

Also: is it safe to assume you do NOT need top shelf 3d performance? Is this just for 2D?
Click to expand...


Believe me they are not very well supported. AMD abandoned support for a lot of older cards and the HD7xxx familly was one. They are "pushing" the newer card and and have really been doing some great work on the linux OEM driver side. The newer RX cards have great support. I have a RX480 which is the most rock'in video card I've ever owned but its in my gaming rig. And likely it could fill the bill but I would have to buy new monitors or try to make things work with a bunch of adapters.

What I'm after is running is having to add more monitor because I'm going to have to keep a win7 VM going all the time now for some remote viewing software that does not support linux. My current (dual DVI out) card is a Nvidia GT 210. I'm not really after 3d performance here. For some reason on Kernel 4.4 the OEM drivers cause a no-boot when I enable them. The Xorg drivers are OK for 2D but the OEM drivers are essential for the VB driver to work inside the VM. Running the VB driver on the win7 vM crashes the whole system.
This setup usually works descent on a well supported card with descent OEM drivers on linux.
 
To be more specific,
AMD development stopped for older cards that used the FGLRX OEM linux driver. This happened mid last year. Updating has stopped so what it is, is what it is. Ubuntu 16.04 dropped support for FGLRX drivers completely.
I kind of saw this coming a while back so I bought this Nvidia GT210 card. It worked fantastic on a earlier distro but my current distro the OEM drivers cause a no boot. I have to stick with the Xorg drivers and they are not very good for this card.

For AMD all driver development newer support does not extend beyond the R9 cards. This is the AMDGPU-Pro drivers. The up side is if you have a newer card the OEM drivers are better than ever and as good as windows performance in some cases.
 
Dr. Righteous said:
Believe me they are not very well supported. AMD abandoned support for a lot of older cards and the HD7xxx familly was one. They are "pushing" the newer card and and have really been doing some great work on the linux OEM driver side. The newer RX cards have great support. I have a RX480 which is the most rock'in video card I've ever owned but its in my gaming rig. And likely it could fill the bill but I would have to buy new monitors or try to make things work with a bunch of adapters.

What I'm after is running is having to add more monitor because I'm going to have to keep a win7 VM going all the time now for some remote viewing software that does not support linux. My current (dual DVI out) card is a Nvidia GT 210. I'm not really after 3d performance here. For some reason on Kernel 4.4 the OEM drivers cause a no-boot when I enable them. The Xorg drivers are OK for 2D but the OEM drivers are essential for the VB driver to work inside the VM. Running the VB driver on the win7 vM crashes the whole system.
This setup usually works descent on a well supported card with descent OEM drivers on linux.
Click to expand...

Any reason you cannot use a standard 3 DVI card and then add a USB->Display adapter? I would generally recommend using an Nvidia based card for Linux as that seems to still be the best supported, but there is a pretty decent open source community for AMD as well. At work we display walls that we use, although we are using multiple GPU cards to output to 9 and 16 screen displays.
 
Dr. Righteous said:
To be more specific,
AMD development stopped for older cards that used the FGLRX OEM linux driver. This happened mid last year. Updating has stopped so what it is, is what it is. Ubuntu 16.04 dropped support for FGLRX drivers completely.
I kind of saw this coming a while back so I bought this Nvidia GT210 card. It worked fantastic on a earlier distro but my current distro the OEM drivers cause a no boot. I have to stick with the Xorg drivers and they are not very good for this card.

For AMD all driver development newer support does not extend beyond the R9 cards. This is the AMDGPU-Pro drivers. The up side is if you have a newer card the OEM drivers are better than ever and as good as windows performance in some cases.
Click to expand...

Are you sure the AMDGPU (not the AMDGPU-Pro) driver won't work? It works great on my A8-4500m is which is a 7640G GPU.
 
Dr. Righteous said:
To be more specific,
AMD development stopped for older cards that used the FGLRX OEM linux driver. This happened mid last year. Updating has stopped so what it is, is what it is. Ubuntu 16.04 dropped support for FGLRX drivers completely.
I kind of saw this coming a while back so I bought this Nvidia GT210 card. It worked fantastic on a earlier distro but my current distro the OEM drivers cause a no boot. I have to stick with the Xorg drivers and they are not very good for this card.

For AMD all driver development newer support does not extend beyond the R9 cards. This is the AMDGPU-Pro drivers. The up side is if you have a newer card the OEM drivers are better than ever and as good as windows performance in some cases.
Click to expand...

FGLRX is deprecated or non-working for pretty much everything.

AMDGPU is the new kernel driver IIRC
AMDGPU-PRO is the replacement for FGLRX.

Unless you need OpenCL (and if you don't know if you need it, you don't need it...) then use the in kernel driver. If you plug it in, it should just work.

Edit2 : This is very informative (clearer link). HD7750 should be supported by the amdgpu kernel driver. Older cards should be supported by the "radeon" driver. I think there is some overlap as well such as R9-290 which is supported by Radon + amdgpu + amdgpu-pro
 
Well to give this thread a bump I decided to do a dual boot Win7/Xubuntu for my gaming rig and migrate that over to serve double duty. So I grab the latest Xubuntu 16.04 ISO.
Install it, and find it is a much upgraded (actually 16.04.3) and it has kernel 4.10. A big jump from 4.4 which 16.04 started with.
I go to the AMD site and grab AMDGPU PRO driver and see some fine print..............NOT COMPATIBLE with Ubuntu 16.04.3.

picard-facepalm.jpg


POlar_facepalm.jpg

latest
 
Ubuntu has changed how they handle Hardware Enablement. The recommendation from Ubuntu is to run the superior kernel driver.

I am not saying I agree with their choice completely... as I understand it people that upgrade to 16.04.3 that where using the non-free driver will find the upgrade will remove it in favor of the OSS kernel driver. I'm not a big fan of a Linux distro that makes changes like that on me... perhaps that is part of why I have never really used Ubuntu.

As dev/null has said though... unless you have a very specific need from the AMD driver like opencl I wouldn't use that driver anyway.

I guess bottom line is Ubuntu may at some point change ubuntu HWE... my guess is they have told AMD to make the changes on their end. So your options are simple.
If you want to run the latest greatest upgraded Ubuntu, use the open source driver. (which most AMD users agree is superior anyway)
Or run a Fedora / Suse / Arch based distro... which can install with no issues the non-free AMD driver. (I know you are not a gamer but there is plenty of info out there for installing parts of the non free driver for suse and fedora, such as the vulkan system. So you use the non-free vulkan with the free driver.... although from what I have read within a few months the non-free driver will likely be superior for vulkan rendering as well)

AMD themselves have been backing the open source driver. The main developers working on the open source AMD drivers are AMD employees paid to do the work by AMD. Its not like your running some bodged up hacked up driver if you use the free driver. (chances are AMD is going to kill off their non-free driver in the future for a complete replacement with the kernel driver)
 
AMDGPU PRO driver sucks anyway, use mesa. Either that or use something other than vanilla Ubuntu. I can confidently say that Ubuntu MATE 16.04.3 runs 4.4.0-89 out of the box (with all updates applied) and will run right up to 4.11.12 no problem as I have two boxes here, one default out of the box and one not, both running perfectly under each kernel.

Vanilla Ubuntu pisses me off anyway as they still haven't rectified the issue with the new improved 'Ubuntu Store' not installing third party .deb installers and you manually have to install gdebi or use dpkg - I reckon that's deliberate action on behalf of Canonical.

I use Nvidia with Nvidia drivers running dual monitors and the implementation is fantastic, beyond two displays however is anyone's guess. I have heard of DP> DVI, HDMI,D-SUB adapter issues under Linux however - Just as well you're not interested in adapters.

What is the resolution of each display?
 
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I've not loaded steam on it or anything, what I need to work is a win7 VM on linux so I can run Rescue Lens. My considering a kernel upgrade from kernel 4.4 to at least 4.10 to see if the Nvidia driver weirdness goes away. If so all will be right with the world.
From what I have read installing the VB video driver in VirtualBox needs the OEM Nvidia drive to work. On the open source driver it crashes the system.
IF I install the current OEM driver, it renders the system a no boot.
 
Due to the fact you were willing to run Xbuntu, I assume you're running an *buntu derivative?

If so, I'd like to focus on the driver no boot issue using the GT610. Because I've run a GT610 and they run awesome under Linux, furthermore I'm currently running the latest 384.59's under Ubuntu MATE without an issue in the world using a GTX670 FTW and kernel 4.11.12, although I'm sure everything would run fine on the default kernel also.

If you are running an *buntu distro, how are you installing drivers? You aren't using the old 'Nvidia recommended' method are you?
 
BulletDust said:
Due to the fact you were willing to run Xbuntu, I assume you're running an *buntu derivative?

If so, I'd like to focus on the driver no boot issue using the GT610. Because I've run a GT610 and they run awesome under Linux, furthermore I'm currently running the latest 384.59's under Ubuntu MATE without an issue in the world using a GTX670 FTW and kernel 4.11.12, although I'm sure everything would run fine on the default kernel also.

If you are running an *buntu distro, how are you installing drivers? You aren't using the old 'Nvidia recommended' method are you?
Click to expand...

Typically I have "Additional Drivers" app in Xubuntu.
It pulls up

Screenshot_2017-08-14_14-24-11.png



If I use either of those Nvidia driver when I reboot the system hangs before the GUI loads.
The card is a Nvidia GeForce 210.
On a previous distro I ran the Nvidia drivers and it worked great.
On this distro, it will render it a non boot.

I noticed at the top it says " G84 (GeForce 8600 gs) "
I didn't give that info before. It might it is pulling down the wrong driver completely.
 
You need to try installing the Ubuntu driver PPA and try using the latest Nvidia drivers, that is odd how the wrong GPU architecture is being detected - How is that even possible? wouldn't surprise me if that's got something to do with your issue.

Add the Ubuntu driver PPA (Hit [ctrl], [alt] & [T] to open a terminal window):

Code: 
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
sudo update
sudo install nvidia-384
sudo install nvidia-settings
sudo reboot

Once you add the PPA drivers will stay updated to the latest version if you want them to via the software updater.

All of the latest drivers will also be visible in the 'Additional Drivers' tab.

I notice you're also not using the processor microcode for your device? I've used a GT210 under *buntu before, they work great, I could even run certain games under one.
 
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I don't believe I have ever seen a video card with 4 dvi ports.

You will probably still want to use a Nvidia card if you just don't want to dick with it. I have heard the ATI drivers are getting much better, as of the R9 280 they were not that great. Sometimes I just feel like I have to purchase an ATI card every few years to prove to myself why I still don't use ATI cards...
 
BulletDust said:
I notice you're also not using the processor microcode for your device? I've used a GT210 under *buntu before, they work great, I could even run certain games under one.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I usually have the processor microcode installed but when I trying to figure out what was killing the system I went through and unchecked things I normally checked. I just never changed it back.
I've had this card for a few years and it was great on previous distros with the OEM drivers. (preformed better than any of my AMD cards ever did even though it is a low end card) When I upgraded and ended up with a no boot after configuring I blamed the hard driver. I couldn't believe it was a video driver issue because the card had been rock solid before.
 
KarsusTG said:
I don't believe I have ever seen a video card with 4 dvi ports.

You will probably still want to use a Nvidia card if you just don't want to dick with it. I have heard the ATI drivers are getting much better, as of the R9 280 they were not that great. Sometimes I just feel like I have to purchase an ATI card every few years to prove to myself why I still don't use ATI cards...
Click to expand...

There are some quad output AMD cards available that are typically a HD7700 chipset. Unfortunately there is no OEM support for those on v16.04 LTS. I decided against it anyway since even though it is a relative low end card they are usually $200+.
For the newer cards (mine is a Rx480) AMD recently release full support for v16.04.03 (latest build) of the LTS distro. Installed the driver and I'm still not sure if the install worked. 3D works, but performance is pretty lousy.
 
Dr. Righteous said:
There are some quad output AMD cards available that are typically a HD7700 chipset. Unfortunately there is no OEM support for those on v16.04 LTS. I decided against it anyway since even though it is a relative low end card they are usually $200+.
For the newer cards (mine is a Rx480) AMD recently release full support for v16.04.03 (latest build) of the LTS distro. Installed the driver and I'm still not sure if the install worked. 3D works, but performance is pretty lousy.
Click to expand...

Performance is generally better with the kernel driver...I'd avoid amdgpu-pro unless you need to do opencl or have a very specific reason for needing them.
 
/dev/null said:
Performance is generally better with the kernel driver...I'd avoid amdgpu-pro unless you need to do opencl or have a very specific reason for needing them.
Click to expand...

Yeah, you guys were not kidding.
I loaded the Unigine Heaven benchmark. On max settings 1080p, the AMD OEM Drivers scored a 19 FPS and 478. PATHETIC!!
I unloaded those and went back to the kernel drivers (Kernel 4.12.5) and it scored average FPS of 39.4 and score of 993. Much better.

Here is the interesting part. On OpenGL in Win7 64bit it scores a 42 FPS average score 1058
On DX 11 it scores it is WORSE at 34.1 and score 859.
All setting the same on the tests.
1080p, ultra quality, Extreme tesselation, 8xAA Vsync enabled.
 
Dr. Righteous said:
Yeah, you guys were not kidding.
I loaded the Unigine Heaven benchmark. On max settings 1080p, the AMD OEM Drivers scored a 19 FPS and 478. PATHETIC!!
I unloaded those and went back to the kernel drivers (Kernel 4.12.5) and it scored average FPS of 39.4 and score of 993. Much better.

Here is the interesting part. On OpenGL in Win7 64bit it scores a 42 FPS average score 1058
On DX 11 it scores it is WORSE at 34.1 and score 859.
All setting the same on the tests.
1080p, ultra quality, Extreme tesselation, 8xAA Vsync enabled.
Click to expand...

The AMD(ati) kernel drivers are open source but that doesn't mean AMD isn't developing them. The developers contributing all the opensource kernel commits are the same guys that where developing the closed driver previously. AMD has simply changed how they are going to deal with Linux. We are still waiting on them to open source their Vulcan driver... other then that though AMD Linux software is progressing very well. (ideally drivers for both AMD and NV would be properly open source for ALL operating systems)

Your results are pretty much bang on... in many instances the AMD linux open source drivers are outperforming windows 10+amd drivers. Winning many of the benchmark type junk like uningine GPUtest ect.... it is also winning depending on settings in games like Grid. This phoronix comparison show the R9 Fury(linux) besting Win10 more often then it looses. Where it losses has nothing to do with the driver... such as being 20% behind shadow of mordor... which is insanely good as SOM is a notoriously poor performing port.
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=radeonsi-win-catching&num=1

Bottom line is you have an AMD GPU the proper driver is the kernel driver that ships by default. Its the driver AMD supports the most right now, they are the ones driving its development. Once AMD goes and open sources the Vulcan driver as well... I would fully expect them to move the pro driver to actual "pro" land and aim it solely at their workstation cards.
 
BulletDust said:
You need to try installing the Ubuntu driver PPA and try using the latest Nvidia drivers, that is odd how the wrong GPU architecture is being detected - How is that even possible? wouldn't surprise me if that's got something to do with your issue.

Add the Ubuntu driver PPA (Hit [ctrl], [alt] & [T] to open a terminal window):

Code: 
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
sudo update
sudo install nvidia-384
sudo install nvidia-settings
sudo reboot

Once you add the PPA drivers will stay updated to the latest version if you want them to via the software updater.

All of the latest drivers will also be visible in the 'Additional Drivers' tab.

I notice you're also not using the processor microcode for your device? I've used a GT210 under *buntu before, they work great, I could even run certain games under one.
Click to expand...


I got the Nvidia driver PPA setup but I went to the Nvidia website and poked around at the linux drivers.
The version 340.102 is the correct driver for my card. I'm sure I've installed it before and it rendered my system a no boot.
If I had a way to recover from it I would attempt the OEM driver again.

Also I tried the manual driver install but the installer kept erroring out for a unknown reason.
 
Dr. Righteous said:
I got the Nvidia driver PPA setup but I went to the Nvidia website and poked around at the linux drivers.
The version 340.102 is the correct driver for my card. I'm sure I've installed it before and it rendered my system a no boot.
If I had a way to recover from it I would attempt the OEM driver again.

Also I tried the manual driver install but the installer kept erroring out for a unknown reason.
Click to expand...

Ignore what the Nvidia website says. The correct driver for your card on your distro is the one your distro says it is.

Seriously just forget completely about NVs website.

I know its a hard habit to break, Windows use has conditioned people that drivers come from manufacturers websites.

In Linux they DO NOT. Unless you are a Linux developer leave the Nvidia website alone. If you are a developer and your working on a Linux distro then you download their driver.... so you can package it for your distros users. (properly hooking it to your kernel build system)

If your distro is offering you a version of the nvidia driver that is 1-2 versions back there is very very good reason for that. 99 times in a 100 its because the developers of your distro have tested the newest Nvidia driver and found it had issues with their distro. Trust me the people working on a large distro like Ubuntu have Nvidia hardware themselves and work to get the newest drivers stable and working as fast as they can. If they skip a NV driver revision its because it has a reversion or some issue in it that they don't want regular users to have to deal with.

Again windows users are conditioned to go and grab the latest greatest driver the day it hits... but how well does that really work for them. How many of them have to deal with a ton of issues for a driver that often adds NOTHING useful for their setup anyway. Often a small driver bump with have nothing but a few game profiles to screw with their benchmarks and little nothing else. Trust me the Ubuntu guys are getting ANYTHING worthwhile into their package installs.

If you really really really want to use the Nvidia website driver shell script all the time... your going to have to find a distro that doesn't make that a huge pain in the ass. Such distros are not going to be user friendly in general. The most user friendly distro I can think of (and am not suggesting) that would make sense to use the NV shell on is OpenSuse tumbleweed. Its 100% rolling and every single time your kernel updates (which will be 1-2 times a week) you are going to have to reboot in run mode 3 (no x server running) run the NV shell script to add the driver NV module to the kernel package and then reboot in to runmode 5 (xserver running). It works well enough and you will always have whatever NV driver you choose to download. I ran opensuse T for awhile to understand it... and I just kept the NV.sh in my /home directory. Rebooting to run mode 3 isn't as hard as it sounds (just add a "3" at the end of your Grub boot options) log in run the shell script then mkinitrd to rebuild your boot img. Frankly I wouldn't mess with that unless you where an actual suse developer or something.

EDIT: Just to be clear in distros like Ubuntu and the other majors that have prebuilt kernels when they update (if your computer doesn't take 20min to and hour or more to update your kernel it was prebuilt) Your distro is not setup to automagic add the NV or any other outside kernel driver to the system when it updates. So although you can force a NV driver with the NV.sh script the first time you update your kernel you are almost for sure going to end up booting to a black screen as the free kernel driver is blacklisted and your new kernel won't have rebuilt the boot img to include the NV driver. (so every time it black screens you will have to boot in run mode 3 re run the script and rebuild your boot img) It will be highly annoying I would imagine.
 
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ChadD said:
Ignore what the Nvidia website says. The correct driver for your card on your distro is the one your distro says it is.

Seriously just forget completely about NVs website.

I know its a hard habit to break, Windows use has conditioned people that drivers come from manufacturers websites.

In Linux they DO NOT. Unless you are a Linux developer leave the Nvidia website alone. If you are a developer and your working on a Linux distro then you download their driver.... so you can package it for your distros users. (properly hooking it to your kernel build system)

If your distro is offering you a version of the nvidia driver that is 1-2 versions back there is very very good reason for that. 99 times in a 100 its because the developers of your distro have tested the newest Nvidia driver and found it had issues with their distro. Trust me the people working on a large distro like Ubuntu have Nvidia hardware themselves and work to get the newest drivers stable and working as fast as they can. If they skip a NV driver revision its because it has a reversion or some issue in it that they don't want regular users to have to deal with.

Again windows users are conditioned to go and grab the latest greatest driver the day it hits... but how well does that really work for them. How many of them have to deal with a ton of issues for a driver that often adds NOTHING useful for their setup anyway. Often a small driver bump with have nothing but a few game profiles to screw with their benchmarks and little nothing else. Trust me the Ubuntu guys are getting ANYTHING worthwhile into their package installs.

If you really really really want to use the Nvidia website driver shell script all the time... your going to have to find a distro that doesn't make that a huge pain in the ass. Such distros are not going to be user friendly in general. The most user friendly distro I can think of (and am not suggesting) that would make sense to use the NV shell on is OpenSuse tumbleweed. Its 100% rolling and every single time your kernel updates (which will be 1-2 times a week) you are going to have to reboot in run mode 3 (no x server running) run the NV shell script to add the driver NV module to the kernel package and then reboot in to runmode 5 (xserver running). It works well enough and you will always have whatever NV driver you choose to download. I ran opensuse T for awhile to understand it... and I just kept the NV.sh in my /home directory. Rebooting to run mode 3 isn't as hard as it sounds (just add a "3" at the end of your Grub boot options) log in run the shell script then mkinitrd to rebuild your boot img. Frankly I wouldn't mess with that unless you where an actual suse developer or something.

EDIT: Just to be clear in distros like Ubuntu and the other majors that have prebuilt kernels when they update (if your computer doesn't take 20min to and hour or more to update your kernel it was prebuilt) Your distro is not setup to automagic add the NV or any other outside kernel driver to the system when it updates. So although you can force a NV driver with the NV.sh script the first time you update your kernel you are almost for sure going to end up booting to a black screen as the free kernel driver is blacklisted and your new kernel won't have rebuilt the boot img to include the NV driver. (so every time it black screens you will have to boot in run mode 3 re run the script and rebuild your boot img) It will be highly annoying I would imagine.
Click to expand...

Nvidia should really post to their website something along to: If you're a Windows user trying linux - nothing to see here. Check your distribution for the driver.
 
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ChadD said:
Ignore what the Nvidia website says. The correct driver for your card on your distro is the one your distro says it is.

Seriously just forget completely about NVs website.

I know its a hard habit to break, Windows use has conditioned people that drivers come from manufacturers websites.
Click to expand...

Yeah I get it.

But like I said; the shell install errored out for an unknown reason.
I followed all the steps, logging out , gaining root access, turning off Xserver, sh ./NVIDIA, blah blah bha.run
It errors out, and does not give a reason. That is a dead end as far as I'm concerned.

I have the PPA installed now and this is what the I have.
Screenshot_2017-08-23_13-35-11.png


FIRST, the card type at the type is completely wrong. The card is a GeForce 210.
The version 340.102 are the most current. Previously that was listed at PROPRIETARY, TESTED.
I've tried both of the drivers listed and both cause the system to hang when booting.
I need a way to recover if I try these again. I don't want to have to reload the system.
 
I just re-read the beginning of the thread. Are you trying to install a linux virtual machine on windows 7? In that case your driver install will most likely fail. You need to install the virtual machine driver instead.
 
Dr. Righteous said:
Yeah I get it.

But like I said; the shell install errored out for an unknown reason.
I followed all the steps, logging out , gaining root access, turning off Xserver, sh ./NVIDIA, blah blah bha.run
It errors out, and does not give a reason. That is a dead end as far as I'm concerned.

I have the PPA installed now and this is what the I have.
Screenshot_2017-08-23_13-35-11.png


FIRST, the card type at the type is completely wrong. The card is a GeForce 210.
The version 340.102 are the most current. Previously that was listed at PROPRIETARY, TESTED.
I've tried both of the drivers listed and both cause the system to hang when booting.
I need a way to recover if I try these again. I don't want to have to reload the system.
Click to expand...

OK fair enough... I am not an ubuntu user so I am sort of going on what I generally know about Ubuntu.

I would start by ensuring nothing is around that shouldn't be with;
sudo apt-get --purge remove nvidia*

I would then ensure you have the semi official ubuntu PPA setuo with;
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
sudo apt update

I perhaps would check to see what the system thinks your card is with;
lspci | grep VGA

The lspci output should say what your GPU is reporting my output looks like this;
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GM107 [GeForce GTX 750 Ti] (rev a2)

If this report looks right... reopen your additional drivers and see if it now has the right card listed. If this is still reporting your card wrong... I don't know man that seems highly strange as this info comes from your hardware.

(again I'm not an Ubuntu user... I believe this should work)
Its my understanding that using this command if you have the ppa setup should give you a list of possible options. (it may perhaps be more in depth then the GUI)
apt search nvidia
Then installing it with
sudo apt install nvidia-xxxx

Edit: and as Boonie points out if this is a VM install... you have to use the proper VM driver
 
B00nie said:
I just re-read the beginning of the thread. Are you trying to install a linux virtual machine on windows 7? In that case your driver install will most likely fail. You need to install the virtual machine driver instead.
Click to expand...
Na,
Have changed course on the best way to make what I need work.
The issue is I have to run a piece of software called "Rescue Lens viewer". It is not linux compatible. It can run in a browser or in a windows client.
So I setup a VM with windows 7 in my linux machine (with the nvidia GeForce 210 card) Running it in Chrome on the VM, it would connect, and show the remove video but the latency was terrible so it was pretty much useless. Since it does work, but latency was very bad, likely this is video driver related. I didn't have the "guest drivers" loaded for the VM (Virtual Box), this should provide better video performance. After loading the guest drivers and trying the app, it crashes the whole system. I blame the open source Xorg drivers. I have tried the OEM drivers more than once, both causing a no boot. Don't want to to that again.

OK, so I have another system (one in my sig) that has Windows 7 on it in the same room. I can do a dual boot with Xubuntu and put a VM machine on it with windows 7. My reasoning is the RX480 card is better supported and should work fine with oem AMDGPU-PRO drivers. This proves not to be the best method. The card has a DVI 2 HDMI and 2 DP ports. This card would provide the multi monitor support I want if I can get everything to work, I will then upgrade the monitor side.

But it was suggested my Nvidia card should work 100% and shouldn't be causing problems. I have to agree. IF I can get it to work correctly, the problem would disappear. I don't want to run 2 PCs, for something a properly configured linux system should be able to handle.
 
Dr. Righteous said:
OK, so I have another system (one in my sig) that has Windows 7 on it in the same room. I can do a dual boot with Xubuntu and put a VM machine on it with windows 7. My reasoning is the RX480 card is better supported and should work fine with oem AMDGPU-PRO drivers. This proves not to be the best method. The card has a DVI 2 HDMI and 2 DP ports. This card would provide the multi monitor support I want if I can get everything to work, I will then upgrade the monitor side.

But it was suggested my Nvidia card should work 100% and shouldn't be causing problems. I have to agree. IF I can get it to work correctly, the problem would disappear. I don't want to run 2 PCs, for something a properly configured linux system should be able to handle.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the clarification. Hopefully you figure things out with ubuntu and your 210 card. If you do go with linux on your other machine with the 480... keep in mind you should be able to just use the default kernel driver. No real reason to use the amdgpu-pro driver. The free driver is better developed by AMD.
 
I've said it before, this sounds like a nomodeset issue to me.

Although the way it detects the wrong GPU is a little odd.
 
BulletDust said:
I've said it before, this sounds like a nomodeset issue to me.

Although the way it detects the wrong GPU is a little odd.
Click to expand...

Actually, I'm pretty sure it's basically the same GPU. nVidia kept reusing the 8xxx line over and over just renaming them through the 2xx line for the lower end stuff. That's probably the exact reason why it's being detected that way.
 
SmokeRngs said:
Actually, I'm pretty sure it's basically the same GPU. nVidia kept reusing the 8xxx line over and over just renaming them through the 2xx line for the lower end stuff. That's probably the exact reason why it's being detected that way.
Click to expand...

I did think that but was too lazy to actually look it up! ;)
 
Those older nvidia 2XX series gpus really do only seem to work up to the 340 and older drivers, wasted a lot of time at work trying to get this working before.
 
tbg said:
Those older nvidia 2XX series gpus really do only seem to work up to the 340 and older drivers, wasted a lot of time at work trying to get this working before.
Click to expand...

Before my latest card, I used to run a 2 GB GT210 on the latest drivers available at the time (about 1.5 years ago now) and the card ran brilliantly under both Linux Mint 16 and Ubuntu MATE 15. You could even game on it provided you kept the resolution reasonable, in the end it was running two 1080p monitors and it did it with ease.

It was always reported as a GT210 though.
 
ChadD said:
OK fair enough... I am not an ubuntu user so I am sort of going on what I generally know about Ubuntu.

I would start by ensuring nothing is around that shouldn't be with;
sudo apt-get --purge remove nvidia*

I would then ensure you have the semi official ubuntu PPA setuo with;
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
sudo apt update

I perhaps would check to see what the system thinks your card is with;
lspci | grep VGA

The lspci output should say what your GPU is reporting my output looks like this;
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GM107 [GeForce GTX 750 Ti] (rev a2)

If this report looks right... reopen your additional drivers and see if it now has the right card listed. If this is still reporting your card wrong... I don't know man that seems highly strange as this info comes from your hardware.

(again I'm not an Ubuntu user... I believe this should work)
Its my understanding that using this command if you have the ppa setup should give you a list of possible options. (it may perhaps be more in depth then the GUI)
apt search nvidia
Then installing it with
sudo apt install nvidia-xxxx

Edit: and as Boonie points out if this is a VM install... you have to use the proper VM driver
Click to expand...

This is what I get :

$ lspci | grep VGA
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation G84 [GeForce 8600 GS] (rev a1)

Ok,
My card is a GeForce GT210. But is that a re-branding of a older GPU? hard to say.
Searching for both cards on the Nvidia driver page it comes up with the same 340.102 driver. So this might be the case.
 
BulletDust said:
Before my latest card, I used to run a 2 GB GT210 on the latest drivers available at the time (about 1.5 years ago now) and the card ran brilliantly under both Linux Mint 16 and Ubuntu MATE 15. You could even game on it provided you kept the resolution reasonable, in the end it was running two 1080p monitors and it did it with ease.
It was always reported as a GT210 though.
Click to expand...
Yeah, the reason I went with a Nvidia card was the issues had getting AMD cards to work. I gave up on red and went green at least for this work system. The first distro I used with this card it worked fantastic on the OEM drivers. When I upgraded to the LTS distro, it killed it.
 
Dr. Righteous said:
This is what I get :

$ lspci | grep VGA
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation G84 [GeForce 8600 GS] (rev a1)

Ok,
My card is a GeForce GT210. But is that a re-branding of a older GPU? hard to say.
Searching for both cards on the Nvidia driver page it comes up with the same 340.102 driver. So this might be the case.
Click to expand...
The 8600 uses a different chipset so the only way your 210 could be rebranded is a counterfit product.
 
Dr. Righteous said:
This is what I get :

$ lspci | grep VGA
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation G84 [GeForce 8600 GS] (rev a1)

Ok,
My card is a GeForce GT210. But is that a re-branding of a older GPU? hard to say.
Searching for both cards on the Nvidia driver page it comes up with the same 340.102 driver. So this might be the case.
Click to expand...

My suggestion at this point....

Is to go and grab a NON Ubuntu/debian based live disc. I would use https://antergos.com/ as their live image is one of the best I have seen.... its an arch linux base. Put it on a USB stick and boot off it.

From there run lspci | grep VGA again.

If it reports your card as a 8600... then I would have to believe 100% that you in fact own a 8600. If it says 210 then something is majority Fd with your ubuntu distribution. At that point you can start looking at your ubuntu build closer..... Or if you really have no attachment to Ubuntu and don't want to bang your head against a wall for a few more weeks I would simply install Antergos (or Manjaro) both are arch based and allow you to install WITH the nvidia driver you don't have to change it after the fact.

I am also assuming the open source driver isn't fine anyway... you can setup multiple monitors on the NV open source driver it requires terminal use instead of having a fancy gui.

Anyway the live image boot and lspci from there should give you a better idea if its your ubuntu install that is odd... or your card.
 
ChadD said:
My suggestion at this point....

Is to go and grab a NON Ubuntu/debian based live disc. I would use https://antergos.com/ as their live image is one of the best I have seen.... its an arch linux base. Put it on a USB stick and boot off it.

From there run lspci | grep VGA again.

If it reports your card as a 8600... then I would have to believe 100% that you in fact own a 8600. If it says 210 then something is majority Fd with your ubuntu distribution. At that point you can start looking at your ubuntu build closer..... Or if you really have no attachment to Ubuntu and don't want to bang your head against a wall for a few more weeks I would simply install Antergos (or Manjaro) both are arch based and allow you to install WITH the nvidia driver you don't have to change it after the fact.

I am also assuming the open source driver isn't fine anyway... you can setup multiple monitors on the NV open source driver it requires terminal use instead of having a fancy gui.

Anyway the live image boot and lspci from there should give you a better idea if its your ubuntu install that is odd... or your card.
Click to expand...

This is a good idea, that card should work!

I swear, the other day when I checked for the driver revision relating to the GT210 on Nvidia's site the GT210 was listed as requiring the latest 384.59's (I did actually check before replying with the terminal commands used to add the PPA). Now when I check the Nvidia site there is no GT210 even listed, there's just a G210 and it says it requires 342.01!

What's going on here?! Where did the GT210 go! It was there just the other day and I swear the Nvidia site stated the latest drivers?!
 
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