NVIDIA GeForce 9500GT 1GB: Low resolution and flickers

Have you contacted ThinkPenguin about that?

Which kernel you are using? $ uname -rv

Have you tried installing linux-generic-lts-belenos, and booting from Linux-libre 3.5?

A NVIDIA 9500GT 1GB noname graphic card was bought from intentionally thinkpenguin.com since they recommend it for Trisquel 6.0 (see https://www.thinkpenguin.com/gnu-linux/geforce-9500gt-1gb-pci-express-20-video-card-gnulinux) that uses Linux libre with free Nouveau graphic card device driver + firmware. Thinkpenguin.com helped me to verify that I'm using VESA as fallback. This could be located in GNOME 3 under System Settings - Details - Graphics that says: "Driver: VESA: G96 Board - 07290000. Experience: Fallback"

To begin with, every 10 seconds the monitor flickers in LXDE and GNOME; 1 blink/10 sec in Trisquel 6.0 installed, and 2 blinks/10 sec when running Trisquel as Live. This did luckily not occur in XFCE which I have since migrate to.

Further, Nouveau can be disabled by adding "nomodeset" to /etc/default/grub and then execute "update-grub && update-grub2", and then reboot. This removed the flickring for the NVIDIA card but did not make it possible to run higher resolution but most important, using fallback mode does not help us solve the Nouveau bug.

Low resolution on the NVIDIA card still occurs with mesa-utils (as suggested by thinkpenguin.com) in both linux-image-current-generic (Linux 3.2) and linux-generic-lts-belenos (Linux 3.5).

"This could be due to your monitor not offering valid or any EDID information. The information is normally read using DDC. If the command xrandr --prop does not mention EDID for your monitor (output), then this is the case. Only a conservative default set of modes is available without an EDID." - http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/TroubleShooting/#index1h1

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TESTS

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TEST 1
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BIOS: Original BIOS (not coreboot to eliminate other bugs)
Kernels tried (uname -a):
Linux trisquel 3.2.0-44-generic #0trisquel1 SMP Sun May 26 19:09:25 UTC 2013 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
Linux trisquel 3.5.0-31-generic #0trisquel2 SMP Wed May 29 03:06:31 UTC 2013 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
Monitor: Fujitsu Advanced LED Display SL27T-1 (27")
Connector: single-link DVI (DVI-D) (graphic card) to HDMI (monitor)
Graphic card: NVIDIA GeForce 9500GT:
Resolution: 1280x1024. Refresing rate: 0.0
$ xrandr --prop
xrandr: Failed to get size of gamma for output default
Screen 0: minimum 640 x 480, current 1280 x 1024, maximum 1280 x 1024
default connected 1280x1024+0+0 0mm x 0mm
1280x1024 0.0*
1024x768 0.0
800x600 0.0
640x480 0.0

--------
TEST 2
--------

BIOS: Original BIOS (not coreboot to eliminate other bugs)
Kernels tried (uname -a):
Linux trisquel 3.2.0-44-generic #0trisquel1 SMP Sun May 26 19:09:25 UTC 2013 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
Linux trisquel 3.5.0-31-generic #0trisquel2 SMP Wed May 29 03:06:31 UTC 2013 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
Monitor: Monitor Fujitsu Advanced LED Display SL27T-1 (27")
Connector: single-link DVI (DVI-D) (graphic card) to HDMI (monitor)
Graphic card: AMD Radeon HD 2400 XT:
Resolution: 1920x1080. Refresing rate: 60.0
$ xrandr --prop
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1920 x 1080, maximum 1920 x 1920
VGA-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
load_detection: 1 (0x00000001) range: (0,1)
DVI-0 connected 1920x1080+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 598mm x 336mm
EDID:
00ffffffffffff001ab3e6077b480000
28150103803c22782ac9a5a4564b9d25
125054a54b0081809500b30001010101
010101010101023a801871382d40582c
450056502100001e000000fd00173d0f
5216000a202020202020000000fc0053
4c3237542d31204c45440a20000000ff
00595633503031383535350a202001a7
02031e724b909f051404130312010716
230907078301000065030c002000023a
80d072382d40102c9680565021000018
011d8018711c1620582c250056502100
009e011d80d0721c1620102c25805650
2100009e011d00bc52d01e20b8285540
56502100001e8c0ad090204031200c40
550056502100001800000000000000ae
dvi_monitor_type: auto
scaler: off
coherent_mode: 1 (0x00000001) range: (0,1)
load_detection: 1 (0x00000001) range: (0,1)
1920x1080 60.0*+ 50.0 24.0
1920x1080i 30.0 25.0
1680x1050 59.9
1280x1024 75.0 60.0
1440x900 59.9
1280x720 50.0 60.0
1440x576i 25.0
1024x768 75.0 60.0
1440x480i 30.0
800x600 75.0 60.3
720x576 50.0
1440x288 50.1
720x480 59.9
1440x240 60.1
640x480 75.0 59.9
720x400 70.1

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TEST 3
--------

Monitor: Tiburon (supplier HYUNDAI CORPORATION) 17" TFT-LCD monitor
BIOS: Original BIOS (not coreboot to eliminate other bugs)
Connector: single-link DVI (DVI-D) (graphic card) to HDMI (monitor)
Graphic card: NVIDIA GeForce 9500GT: 1024x768. Refresing rate: 60.0

--------
TEST 4
--------

Monitor: Tiburon (supplier HYUNDAI CORPORATION) 17" TFT-LCD monitor
BIOS: Original BIOS (not coreboot to eliminate other bugs)
Connector: single-link DVI (DVI-D) (graphic card) to HDMI (monitor)
Graphic card: AMD Radeon HD 2400 XT: 1280x1024. Refresing rate: 60.0

Yes, it is, but there is two versions of it available: 3.2.0 and 3.5.0. The default is 3.2.0, installable through the "linux-generic" package; the 3.5.0 version is a backport installable through the "linux-generic-lts-belenos" one, and may be better than 3.2.0 to you.

Have you contacted ThinkPenguin on this issue? I think they would want to know if something like that is happening.

I too have this graphics card running under Trisquel 6.0. It was purchased from Thinkpenguin(as was the entire machine) and I originally ran it using Trisquel 5.5 with no problems. The graphics worked fantastically under Trisquel 5.5. Now that I've install Trisquel 6.0, the resolution is fine but my cursor is jumpy and my video acceleration is very poor.

You should check out which driver for your graphic adapter is running.

Running vesa as fallback might cause this issues.

I suspect you have issues to use Nouveau as I did. Updating the kernel to a newer version like 3.2 might help.

I had 3D acceleration with Nouveau in a fresh Trisquel 6.0 installation but it vanished after an update. Since a fresh crunchbang installation with Kernel 3.2 showed similar behaviour I suspect that kernel 3.2 in combination with Nouveau might cause this issue.

Seen this? http://trisquel.info/en/forum/nvidia-gt9500-toutatis#comment-33411

We haven't been able to duplicate the problem.

I would suggest the following though to anybody experiencing problems as I believe there were regressions in the 3.2 kernel:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install linux-image-current-generic mesa-utils

No need to add jxself's repository. I've added mesa-utils as well. Reboot and re-test.

Nouveau was fixed in Linux-libre used by Trisquel 6.0 after an sudo apt-get dist-upgrade. I tried the graphic on GNOME 3 with Linux 0.3.2-49 (both 32 and 64 bit) with a NVIDIA GT9500 card.