New nVidia driver version out for Linux and other Unix-type operating systems.

[arabellajones]

My Linux Mint system has upgraded to v515.65 which appears to be an automatic upgrade from the v515.57 that fixed the bug affecting OpenGL software such as Second Life. There has not yet been a change to the v516.59 for Windows, which was released at the end of June, fixing the same OpenGL bug

Please take note of the different version numbers for Unix-class systems and for Windows. I know most of us use Windows, but when the OpenGL bug popped up, pretty much all the commentators talked about the Windows version number as if it were the only one affected.

This new Linux version arrived on my system through the Ubuntu chain, which avoids some of the possible problems with an install of a direct download from nVidia. As usual, take care. There may be a Windows driver upgrade close to being released.

[Henri Beauchamp]

2 hours ago, arabellajones said:

My Linux Mint system has upgraded to v515.65 which appears to be an automatic upgrade from the v515.57 that fixed the bug affecting OpenGL software

What bug are you speaking about ?... For Linux, v515.57 had the deferred rendering breakage (that appeared in v515.48.07) fixed already, and I see no difference with v515.65...

2 hours ago, arabellajones said:

This new Linux version arrived on my system through the Ubuntu chain, which avoids some of the possible problems with an install of a direct download from nVidia.

I always install NVIDIA's official drivers, never the ones from the distros which come late and often broken...

Edited August 4, 2022 by Henri Beauchamp

[Teagan Tobias]

 

I am a Linux user, I am using Linux Mint Cinnamon 19.3 and my Update Manager installed, within the last week or so, (copy paste from system reports) “NVIDIA 470.141.03” and is telling me my system is up to date. My system runs fine. Not sure what to think.

Just saying, and, Not A Geek.

 

[Henri Beauchamp]

14 minutes ago, Teagan Tobias said:

“NVIDIA 470.141.03” and is telling me my system is up to date.

The v470 branch is a legacy one to be used for ”old” NVIDIA cards (Kepler GPUs), but will work fine as well with some newer cards (Pascal GPUs, for example). It was not affected by the bug, so you are safe.

The list of current NVIDIA Linux drivers can be found here.

[Teagan Tobias]

 

Thanks for the link, but the way I read that I should be using the more up to date driver. My video card is: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 3GB. And not that it matters but my CPU is: AMD Ryzen 7 1800X.

And like I said I don’t appear to be having any problems with my system, or my viewer.

I run Kokua as my viewer and have been even before it was named Kokua.

(I ran winders for a long time)

But like I said, thanks for the link.

 

[arabellajones]

10 hours ago, Teagan Tobias said:

 

Thanks for the link, but the way I read that I should be using the more up to date driver. My video card is: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 3GB. And not that it matters but my CPU is: AMD Ryzen 7 1800X.

And like I said I don’t appear to be having any problems with my system, or my viewer.

 

Linux Mint has a "Display Manager" tool which lists several driver options. It's available through the menu system and from the Welcome app. I ran the v470 driver for a long time. It's about as low-geek as you can get for changing video drivers. I eventually switched to the v510 driver which is definitely faster, and your video card is faster hardware than mine. Display Manager now includes the latest nVidia version as an option on my system, but that may reflect some of the things I did since May.

 

[arabellajones]

I am putting this link here to the official Linux Mint instructions for upgrading from Mint 19.3 to Mint 20

This is not a simple process, there is much done on the command line, and it takes several hours. You need to be pretty sure of your Linux system-admin skills. But support for Linux Mint 19.3 ends in 2023 so it is, I think, time to start developing the skills needed.

You may be surprised how many places there are where you can learn the skills. It's a different distribution, but The Raspberry Pi organisation publishes a lot of Linux basics, and this is a useful starting point

This particular book about the command-line is what the Raspberry Pi people are teaching schoolkids.

I am probably pushing the limits of the formal wording of the content rules for this forum, so I shall stop here, but this is one of the sources I used for developing my own Linux skills.

 

[arabellajones]

This may still be pushing the limits of the content rules. Linux Mint v21 has been released. This is not something trivial, not something easy, and I feel no urge to rush into it myself, but it is there. Linux Mint is one of the more popular distributions, derived in turn from Ubuntu, but I shall do a bit of wait-and-see.

[Teagan Tobias]

 

Yes I saw that, have downloaded to build live USB to test with.

On my test system, there now, I have Second Life up and running with Kokua viewer on Mint 20.3.

Have some of my windows things I can’t do without loaded with Wine.

So my test system has gone from Mint 19.3, Wine 4, Nvidia 470 to Mint 20.3, Wine 7 and Nvidia 515.65, and after reloading several times everything appears to be working. Upgrading is to tedious and I prefer to load new and use backups to fill in my data after some installs.

Still need to see if I can get several Second Life viewers loaded with Wine, on my 19.3 system I was getting some errors.

And thanks for alerting me to the end of life that is coming for 19.3. Will look at Mint 21 before I update my main system, may just skit 20 altogether.

[Henri Beauchamp]

5 hours ago, Teagan Tobias said:

Still need to see if I can get several Second Life viewers loaded with Wine, on my 19.3 system I was getting some errors.

You should really avoid running viewers under Wine: they will run super slow and bugs in Wine will make you experience miserable (for example, there's a bug in file writes where the file pointer is not updated after the write unless an explicit flush is done, which will likely corrupt cache files).

Simply use viewers that provide a Linux build. In order of appearance: Cool VL Viewer, Firestorm, Kokua, Alchemy. There is also Singularity, but it is outdated.

Edited August 7, 2022 by Henri Beauchamp

[Teagan Tobias]

 

Hi Henri, recently, 26 July, Kokua dev Chorazin sent out a notice that Kokua (Imprudence) may not be able to provide a Linux build in the future. Because that is just about the only viewer I have used since Emerald I have started looking around at other viewers.

Have installed Cool VL, thanks, and Alchemy still says Coming Eventually. Someday. so no Linux there.

Firestorm just sounds to big and I find their install confusing for Linux, so I stay away from that one, and Singularity is one of the viewers I was getting errors on, because others use it I know its my system, but that does not matter.

Also the Second Life Linux viewer will not run for me so that one is out.

Do you know if the file writes bug is still in Wine 7.0 and 7.14? I may just try using it on my test system and see what happens.

 

[Henri Beauchamp]

8 hours ago, Teagan Tobias said:

Do you know if the file writes bug is still in Wine 7.0 and 7.14?

Yes, it is still in Wine v7.14. You can verify by installing the Windows version of the Cool VL Viewer and running it under Wine: while rezzing a scene, open the debug console and watch for ”WARNING: LLFileSystem::seek: Could not append enough padding bytes to seek to position: ...” messages; they are the result of that bug. Enabling ”Advanced” -> ”Caches” -> ”Flush on asset write (for Wine)” works around this bug for the Cool VL Viewer and makes the warnings vanish as a consequence (but it is at the price of a slow down on cache writes).

[arabellajones]

On 8/7/2022 at 3:09 PM, arabellajones said:

This may still be pushing the limits of the content rules. Linux Mint v21 has been released. This is not something trivial, not something easy, and I feel no urge to rush into it myself, but it is there. Linux Mint is one of the more popular distributions, derived in turn from Ubuntu, but I shall do a bit of wait-and-see.

I have now upgraded to Linux Mint v21. It's working OK. I could have waited longer.

[primerib1]

On 8/8/2022 at 6:17 AM, Teagan Tobias said:

Hi Henri, recently, 26 July, Kokua dev Chorazin sent out a notice that Kokua (Imprudence) may not be able to provide a Linux build in the future.

I'm still trying to set up a proper build system for Kokua based on a more modern-ish Ubuntu.

The current build system uses components that only works properly on Ubuntu 16.04, which is too long in the tooth already.

Haven't got time yet to iron out the gremlins.

Besides I see that as LL is migrating to GitHub they are also modernizing some components; Kokua tracks SL Viewer quite closely.