[Nouveau] nouveau on opensuse 11 request for help

[Elle Stone]

Hi, all,

I just installed opensuse 11, 64-bit from the kde live cd.  I use icewm -
gnome and kde desktops are too busy and windowish for my taste, but a lot of
programs that I run depend on kde.  My video card is a geforce 7600.  I'm
using the nvidia driver because I couldn't figure out any other way to have
dual-monitor support.  I am new to opensuse, having used debian lenny
previously, and windows before that (vista drove me to linux).  I am still
something of a linux newbie.  I am reasonably comfortable working at the
command line and yast is driving me nuts.

I am interested in trying out the nouveau driver, but only if the end result
stands a good chance of fixing a problem and adding a benefit.  I searched
the opensuse forums and your archives, and googled around, and came up with
not much information about using nouveau and opensuse.  I read through the
documentation about how to install nouveau and was not comfortable just
diving in and trying to follow the instructions.  My first stumbling block
is that for some reason all of a sudden yast stubbornly refuses to allow me
to add any new repositories.  I think I could get around this problem by
downloading rpms to my local rpm repository.  However, my second stumbling
block is that the very word "git" just makes me think I'm getting in over my
head.

I have a NEC 2190uxi LCD, resolution 1600x1200 and an old Samsung Syncmaster
700s CRT, resolution 1280x1024, currently running a 2880x1200 desktop
(Samsung below NEC) with twinview.  The NEC can physically rotate to
portrait position.  The Samsung, obviously, doesn't rotate.

I don't play games on my computer.  I do a lot of 16-bit image processing,
but strictly 2-D.  I do run google-earth, which probably uses 3-D.

Here's the problem:  The proprietary nvidia driver doesn't regulate the fan
speed, so my fan runs at full speed all the time.  And the proprietary
nvidia driver doesn't support randr 1.2.

Here's the benefits that would make the pain of trying to get nouveau
working on my computer worthwhile:  regulated fan speed and the ability to
rotate the image on the NEC to portrait mode, while not rotating the image
on the Samsung.

Can randr actually rotate the image on one screen, while not rotating the
image on the other screen?

Can nouveau work with randr to perform the above rotation with my video card
on opensuse 11?

If "yes" to the above questions, can someone on the nouveau mailing list
help me get this stuff working?  I'm not a complete computer idiot - I
designed and built my workstation (tyan, opteron, etc) myself.  I installed
debian beginning with net install and a console-only minimal system.  I've
built hugin and a few other packages from source/cvs.  But I don't really
understand what I'm doing in linux (i'm just good at following directions)
and as I said, the opensuse yast thing is painful.  And when I try to find
how to do stuff in opensuse from the command line, half the time the
information turns out to be no longer valid.  So if I try to use nouveau I
would really need some assistance from someone much more knowledgeable than
myself.

Anyway, either way, keep up the good work.  I like the direction the randr
and nouveau projects are going.

elle stone
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