State of nouveau on ppc

DirtyHairy · Posted: Mon Sep 26, 2011 12:22 pm Post subject: State of nouveau on ppc

After about two years of running debian on my G4, I have finally decided to put it back on gentoo. One of the reasons for coming back was my hope that a more recent kernel + radeon + mesa combination might give me back stable and reliable (and accelerated) graphics on my radeon 9600. However, my hopes were shattered by KMS insisting to crash on me, and what I then found on the web about the state of radeon on powerpc didn't exactly raise my hopes --- I got the strong impression that radeon on powerpc is in the more advanced stages of decomposition

I therefore consider of making one final investment in the machine and getting a geforce card. Specifically, I am considering buying a geforce 6200 off ebay. However, I thought it'd be wise to check how nouveau is working on powerpc these days before shelling out my money, so: is anybody successfully running nouveau with acceleration on ppc32, maybe even on this specific card?

chithanh · Posted: Sat Oct 01, 2011 5:34 pm Post subject:

Most of the crash problems with radeon on PPC come from using the radeonfb driver. Which is not really compatible to modern X, but many people still use it because it is more or less required for suspend and backlight control.

For NV40 generation cards, don't expect any wonders from nouveau (ie. it will be slow).

DirtyHairy · Posted: Wed Oct 05, 2011 8:16 am Post subject:

Thanks for the answer! I've build the system over the last weekend and got a working X using my radeon with minimal xorg.conf tweaking, but hadn't time to check any further. If the system runs stable on the radeon and gives me at least basic working 3D, I'll keep it like this for now, if it doesn't, I think I'll try the NVIDIA --- I would prefer stable 2D and slow 3D over unstable 2D and / or 3D

Also, thanks for the hint about radeonfb; I am indeed using it. However, if I run into any trouble, I'll try switching to the OF framebuffer (this is a desktop, so I don't need suspend or backlight control).

Btw, big kudos to the powerpc developers: building the system went as smoothly as imaginable, no rough edges anywhere. You guys are doing a great job keeping gentoo/ppc alive, especially in the light of linux on ppc based macs getting more and more exotic over time

chithanh · Posted: Wed Oct 05, 2011 11:56 am Post subject:

No framebuffer driver at all should be used with modern KMS drivers. Especially radeonfb is known to cause display corruption and system instability.

DirtyHairy · Posted: Wed Oct 05, 2011 2:08 pm Post subject:

I know, but the modesetting kernel driver immediately crashes my machine, so I can't use it and therefore need either the OF or the radeon framebuffer in order to get any console at all (plain VGA is not available on ppc afaik).