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Nvidia 331.20 driver

Discussion in 'General Linux Discussion' started by Daerandin, Nov 16, 2013.

  1. Daerandin

    Daerandin Well-Known Member

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    For anyone considering updating to the newest nvidia driver, I would suggest against it. It seems to introduce some issues. Many have reported that they can no longer close the terminal by pressing ctrl-d or even typing exit. Ctrl-c to stop a running process in terminal also seem to no longer work.

    I have also spotted a few zombies staying around when I run 'top' in terminal. This is also completely new after upgrading to 331.20 driver.

    At the moment, I am still considering if I should downgrade (which is thankfully extremely easy on Arch) or if I'll just muddle through these issues until nvidia release new version that fix these issues.

    Had it not been that newer nvidia cards have poor 3D acceleration on the nouveau driver, then I would have switched to nouveau a long time ago.
  2. Daerandin

    Daerandin Well-Known Member

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    I downgraded to 325.15, I was beginning to notice more issues so I'll stick with 325.15 until these bugs are fixed. I strongly advise against the 331.20 nvidia driver.

    That's one nice thing about Arch, I get to experience bugs in new versions before most other distros, haha.
  3. ThunderRd

    ThunderRd Irreverent Query Chairman Staff Member

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    That's interesting, I've been running that driver for a couple of weeks as well as the new X version, and haven't seen any of the issues you're talking about in Gentoo.

    I'll keep a closer watch and see if anything turns up.
  4. Daerandin

    Daerandin Well-Known Member

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    It does not seem to affect everyone. This may be only a problem for laptop users for all I know, or maybe only certain models. There are currently two topics about this on Arch forums, some on nvidia forums, and I came across one on Fedora forums as well through some googling, and a bug report for gentoo.

    Some seem to have a lot more serious issues than what I experience, like applications failing to start.
  5. booman

    booman Grand High Exalted Mystic Emperor of Linux Gaming Staff Member

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    Thank you for the heads-up
    I was thinking of installing those 331 drivers, but have been waiting.
    I'm still on 310 and my games are running fine.

    Maybe I'll upgrade to Mint 16 over the weekend and then update my Nvidia drivers to 325
  6. Gizmo

    Gizmo Chief Site Administrator Staff Member

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    Obviously a YMMV issue: I'm running them on Fedora 19 without problems.

    I'm a little mystified how the video driver can cause problems exiting from an application running in the terminal. That seems rather counter-intuitive. Still, it's rather hard to argue with "when I upgrade it breaks, when I downgrade it works".
  7. Daerandin

    Daerandin Well-Known Member

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    One thing I have spotted is that the cropping up of defunct processes seem to primarily affect xfce4 users, and everyone affected by this on the Arch forums have stated that downgrading to the previous nvidia driver fixes the problem. The worst cases I read about were some who were unable to start any display manager at all with the 331.20 driver.

    Last I checked the nvidia forums, there was a dev there asking for more information from those who experienced some of the worst symptoms so they are at least looking into it.
  8. Daerandin

    Daerandin Well-Known Member

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    Been going back to 331.20 and using it for several days now. It seems to vary quite a lot. On one boot, my computer was on for almost 48 hours, I played games and did a lot on it. The only problem I noticed was that my screensaver remained as a zombie. However, on another boot I had issues with the xfce4 terminal not closing with ctrl-d or when typing exit. So things appear to be very random, except for zombies appearing. Still, at most I've only seen 6 zombie processes at once.

    Performance is great on these drivers, so I've decided to stick with it despite these minor issues.
  9. Daerandin

    Daerandin Well-Known Member

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    Nvidia driver 331.38 is out now and all the little issues I experienced with 331.20 are all gone. Nvidia devs claimed to have fixed practically all the issues that was introduced in the last version, and so far things are looking good on my end.
  10. Kladiator

    Kladiator Member

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    Daerandin, as I told Booman on another thread a couple of days ago I installed Manjaro (Openbox)
    on an older dual core.
    I chose the non-free option on the live cd and Manjaro automatically downloaded and configured the Nvidia driver 331.20.

    On this system everything works perfectly well.

    On a side note, I am really impressed by this distro, installation, setup and use couldn't have been any simpler.
  11. Daerandin

    Daerandin Well-Known Member

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    Yes I know the issues with 331.20 was not preset for everyone. Personally I only had a few minor annoyances. Firefox occasionally crashing when I wanted to download something, and defunct processes remaining over time. Now I have no issues.

    Glad you like Manjaro. You should know that with Manjaro, you have full use of everything in the Arch Linux AUR, and that is quite a lot of packages. Manjaro wiki got some info on it.

    I noticed Manjaro wiki recommend using yaourt to install from AUR, but I would suggest reading a bit further down on installing manually from AUR. This will give you better knowledge of how it works, and you can even customize the PKBUILD file if you so desire. For example, I edit the PKBUILD for xscreensaver-arch (xscreensaver with Arch logo) so that it does not require a display manager to build and install.
  12. Kladiator

    Kladiator Member

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    Thank you for the tips, I have no doubt Manjaro will remain on my system for a long time.
    I will also install it on my main core7 PC, I think game performance, already very good (and sometimes absolutely great), will benefit from it.
  13. booman

    booman Grand High Exalted Mystic Emperor of Linux Gaming Staff Member

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    Dude don't get me excited about another distro!!!
    I may actually have to try Manjaro
    I have 5 older computers and would love them to eventually be Linux gaming machines.
    I'm open to all suggestions, maybe Manjaro could be my next distro?

    By the way, I'm on Mint 16 now and it installed Nvidia 319 for me.
    So I'm not quite up to date, but it much newer than before.
  14. Kladiator

    Kladiator Member

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    If you want a challenge, a way to learn Linux a little better, Manjaro is NOT for you.

    This distro takes care of everything, from installing the proprietary Nvidia driver to the multimedia codecs.
    By the way, the graphical installer is a clone of Ubuntu's Ubiquity, so I felt right at home from the start.

    The default Openbox configuration and the documentation is way better than Crunchbang's and of course the OS is blazingly fast.

    From a guy like me used to Ubuntu and in general Debian-based distros, I was expecting having to learn a few things from an Arch Linux based OS, but so far I still have not yet touched the terminal simply because it was not necessary (not that I would have minded, I really like using it).

    Of course Openbox is not the only option, you have also the KDE, XFCE and Minimal Net Editions.

    I know you are super busy, but if you manage to find a little time, you can't go wrong with Manjaro.
  15. booman

    booman Grand High Exalted Mystic Emperor of Linux Gaming Staff Member

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    Ok, you have convinced me... I'll give it a go
    Can you do live disk like all the other distros?
  16. Kladiator

    Kladiator Member

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    Yes you can (no, I am not mimicking Obama's 2008 campaign).

    To tell you the truth I wanted to use an USB drive, like I am now used to do, but Startup Disk creator is broken on Ubuntu 12.04 and the other alternative I am aware of, the Universal USB Installer, does not include Manjaro among the Linux distros list: I tried anyway, but it didn't work.
  17. booman

    booman Grand High Exalted Mystic Emperor of Linux Gaming Staff Member

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    Its funny you mention it, because I've never created a boot USB in Linux. I always do it in Windows.
    I knew sooner or later I would have to....
    Linux Live USB does support Majaro, but I don't see a tar or linux version of the program
  18. booman

    booman Grand High Exalted Mystic Emperor of Linux Gaming Staff Member

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    Mint 16 has this USB Image Writer and USB Stick Formatter
    I wonder if that would do it?
    Screenshot from 2014-01-15 06:01:56.png
  19. booman

    booman Grand High Exalted Mystic Emperor of Linux Gaming Staff Member

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  20. Kladiator

    Kladiator Member

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    Booman, according to Clement Lefevbre, Mint's main developer, USB Image Writer should work.
    Give it a try!

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