NVidia (Thinkpad) completely broken

[Alex Stark]

This is for fresh should-be-perfect install of 12.04 precise pangolin on T61 thinkpad and similar models.

Nouveau and nVidia affected.

There are multiple bug reports and partial fixes on various web sites.

Problem: Nouveau driver is fundamentally broken for some configurations. In particular, I am using *** a large (1920x1200) monitor via a port replicator ***. It seems to work on the built-in LCD, and when in crippled lower-resolution modes. However, it is difficult to configure to a persistently crippled mode of operation.

The symptoms are breakdown of video and system crash.

NVidia driver for these machines is useless (obviously I am pretty stupid trying to use old hardware like this). In particular, the NVidia driver was always junk when using a port replicator. In this setup (12.04 etc) one has to tediously reconfigure the entire display setup everytime, and such things as the wallpaper are broken even then. Basically, I never found the NVidia driver to be any good for anything but the built-in LCD.

Put another way, the NVidia driver was dreadful for port replicators, and now that the Nouveau driver crashes all the time users are regretting upgrading to 12.04.

The Nouveau 10.04 LTS drivers at this date (ie 2012/08/06) were just fine.

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. It seems that your bug report is not filed about a specific source package though, rather it is just filed against Ubuntu in general. It is important that bug reports be filed about source packages so that people interested in the package can find the bugs about it. You can find some hints about determining what package your bug might be about at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage. You might also ask for help in the #ubuntu-bugs irc channel on Freenode.

To change the source package that this bug is filed about visit https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1033704/+editstatus and add the package name in the text box next to the word Package.

[This is an automated message. I apologize if it reached you inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]

[penalvch (penalvch)]

Alex Stark, this bug was reported a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering if this is still an issue? If so, could you please test for this with the latest development release of Ubuntu? ISO images are available from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/ .

If it remains an issue, could you please run the following command in the development release from a Terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal), as it will automatically gather and attach updated debug information to this report:

apport-collect -p xserver-xorg-video-nouveau REPLACE-WITH-BUG-NUMBER

Please note, given that the information from the prior release is already available, doing this on a release prior to the development one would not be helpful.

Thank you for your understanding.

Helpful bug reporting tips:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReportingBugs

[Alex Stark (jalexstark)]

Naturally I have moved on. I have installed 13.10 and sinced jumped to xubuntu-desktop (because I use the Alt key). At present I am using NVidia. This is still significantly broken for laptops with external monitors. It worked under Unity, but the UI decisions and bugs in that are intolerable.

For reference, the main problem with the NVidia driver is that, when booting (a T61) port replicated external monitor, it uses both screens for the login screen. And, yes, it fixes the login and controls to the closed laptop screen. For me, I can just leave the settings and type my password in the unseen display. After some mouse movement the desktop sorts itself out after logon.

So I could try the 13.10 Nouveau if you like, but other than that this bug has been left unsolved and too stale to address.

Please test laptops for real world situations, which NVidia seem not to.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for xserver-xorg-video-nouveau (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]