[Nix-dev] Experiences with Nvidia Optimus?

[Arie Middelkoop]

On 19-01-12 22:57, Mathijs Kwik wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 9:52 PM, Arie Middelkoop<amiddelk at gmail.com>  wrote:
>> Hi Mathijs,
>>
>> Thanks for your reply. It resolved my confusion somewhat :)
>>
>>
>>>> Although it is likely a separate issue, when using the intel driver, all
>>>> KDE
>>>> popdown menus have a graphical corruption (e.g. fully black), whereas
>>>> e.g.
>>>> popup menus in Chrome do not have any corruption. But this is an
>>>> incentive
>>>> to me to put in some effort to get it up and running properly :)
>>>
>>>
>>> Yes, that issue is fixed in intel 2.15, patch here
>>>
>>> https://github.com/bluescreen303/nixpkgs/commit/a0f72db5786f9272735c5a797c4a1fb878de2587
>>> I know 2.17 is available in nix repo, but it didn't compile (missing
>>> deps). Officially 2.15+ should need newer xorg-server/mesa libs, but I
>>> don't have issues.
>>
>>
>> Version 2.15 is now apparently committed in nixpkgs. It solves the graphical
>> corruptions indeed, although hardware acceleration even with only the intel
>> driver does not seem to work yet ("aiglx error: calling driver entry point
>> failed"). In fact, once in a while it does not notice that it fails and
>> locks up the X server.
>
> I submitted 2.15, but since today I'm having accelleration issues as
> well. It has been running smoothly for over a month before.
> I suspect the recent mesa&  libdrm upgrades to interfere. I will try
> to narrow it down this weekend.

Thanks!
Out of experience, I can tell you that in order for 2.17 to compile, you 
only need a more recent version of dri2proto. However, that does not 
solve the acceleration problem either, so I guess (as you mentioned) 
that more packages have to be changed to get a consistent set for the 
intel driver.

> So your claim about new hardware isn't totally true. I think intel
> does a nice job here and it's nixos who's lagging behind (that's not a
> complaint though).

Sure. My claim about new hardware was only half serious, in the sense 
that it helps when it works even when you're not running the "bleeding 
edge" of everything ;)

> Ubuntu and Arch do stay up to date and bump on all these small
> inter-module issues and find out the best dependencies. But they have
> a far larger developer-base and userbase to report and test issues.
> So for nix - as long as no-one has issues - it's easiest/safest to
> stick to the "monolithic" xorg releases.

I thought of two simple strategies that I simply wanted to try:

a) try the latest version of all the X11 packages. I wrote a simple 
shell script that would crawl the xorg mirror and update the .list 
files. With those I could at least rebuild xserver etc, but I wasn't 
patient enough to really test it out (it started building thunderbird 
and the gimp so it got at least very far in the process)

b) try the versions of the packages that are ~amd64 in the gentoo 
ebuilds. I have at least one system running those, so I know that these 
should "work" together. Also, these are likely close to (a).

These strategies are fairly automatic, which would be nessesairy for me 
because I lack the knowledge and time to find out what the smallest 
change would be...

but if you would be able to find a less rigorous solution, then I'd be 
very happy :)

> Just out of interest (since you have a recent laptop as well): Does
> the suspend functionality work when you close the lid? Mine doesn't by
> default because of the USB3 driver, but I found a workaround which I
> can submit to nixos if others need it.

I have no problem with the machine entering a suspended state. Hower, I 
did notice that it doesn't always come out of the suspend. I guess that 
this is again related to the videocard issue.

Perhaps it's relevant to mention that I have some TAxas Instruments 
device as USB3 controller, which may be different from yours:

USB Controller: Intel Corporation Cougar Point USB Enhanced Host 
Controller #2 (rev 05)
USB Controller: Texas Instruments Device 8241 (rev 02)

Let me know if I can help you somehow.

Cheers,
Arie