Nouveau bug with NVIDIA GeForce 9500GT 1GB

[This bug is in its appropriate forum: "If you are using packages from your distribution, send the bug reports to your distribution and not directly to us." - http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/Bugs/]

A NVIDIA 9500GT 1GB no-name graphic PCI-e card was intentionally bought from thinkpenguin.com as they recommends it for Trisquel 6.0 (see https://www.thinkpenguin.com/gnu-linux/geforce-9500gt-1gb-pci-express-20-video-card-gnulinux). Trisquel uses Linux libre loaded with Nouveau, a free graphic card device driver and firmware.

First experience I had with the card was that 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. 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"

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 (but not on a ATI 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). I CANNOT use my NVIDIA card until this bug have been fixed since I do not have any refresing rate. Another reason is of course that my ATI card provides significant better screen resolution.

"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

Finally, keep in mind that /etc/X11/xorg.conf does not exists and generating the file (at least in Arch GNU/Linux - https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Nouveau) will cause X to fail to properly load the Nouveau driver.

####################################
NVIDIA GeForce vs AMD Radeon graphic card comparison

----------------------------------
NVIDIA GeForce 9500GT
----------------------------------

Hardware:
* Graphic card: NVIDIA GeForce 9500GT
* Monitor: 27" Fujitsu Advanced LED Display SL27T-1
* Cable and adapter: DVI-D male to HDMI (unknown version) male cable, connected from graphic card to monitor respectively. HDMI male to HDMI male v1.4 cable and HDMI female to DVI-I male 24k gold plated adapter not tested yet.
* Mainboard: GIGABYTE GA-M57SLI-S4 (rev 2.0) - GIGABYTE had the best Vendor Cooperation Score at coreboot.org

Software:
* BIOS: SMBIOS 2.3 - Original BIOS, to avoid Coreboot bugs
* Kernels tried: Linux trisquel 3.5.0-34-generic x86_64, and Linux trisquel 3.2.0-48-generic x86_64
* X display manager: LightDM
* Desktop environment: XFCE

Screen values:
* XFCE: Applications Menu > Settings > Monitor Settings: Resolution: 1280x1024. Refresing rate: 0.0

-----------------------------------
AMD Radeon HD 2400 XT
-----------------------------------

Hardware:
* Graphic card: AMD Radeon HD 2400 XT
* Monitor: 27" Fujitsu Advanced LED Display SL27T-1
* Cable and adapter: HDMI male to HDMI male v1.4 cable, connected from graphic card via a DVI-I male 24k gold plated adapter to monitor.
* Mainboard: GIGABYTE GA-M57SLI-S4 (rev 2.0) - GIGABYTE had the best Vendor Cooperation Score at coreboot.org

Software:
* BIOS: SMBIOS 2.3 - Original BIOS, to avoid Coreboot bugs
* Kernels tried: Linux trisquel 3.5.0-34-generic x86_64, and Linux trisquel 3.2.0-48-generic x86_64
* X display manager: LightDM
* Desktop environment: XFCE

Screen values:
* XFCE: Applications Menu > Settings > Monitor Settings: Resolution: 1920x1080. Refresing rate: 60.0
* Shell> 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:
00ffffffffffff001ab3e5077b480000
28150103803c22782ac9a5a4564b9d25
125054a54b0081809500b30001010101
010101010101023a801871382d40582c
450056502100001e000000fd00173d0f
5216000a202020202020000000fc0053
4c3237542d31204c45440a20000000ff
00595633503031383535350a202001a8
02031e724b909f051404130312010716
230907078301000065030c001000023a
80d072382d40102c9680565021000018
011d8018711c1620582c250056502100
009e011d80d0721c1620102c25805650
2100009e011d00bc52d01e20b8285540
56502100001e8c0ad090204031200c40
550056502100001800000000000000be
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

Uhm, why file a duplicate bug? https://trisquel.info/en/issues/8101

Vesa is a generic "works with all cards, badly" driver. Can you disable the ATI card in the BIOS or perhaps physically remove it?

Maybe make a custom xorg.conf where you might need to add a modeline.

GNOME 3 now works with NVIDIA GT9500 using Linux 0.3.2-49 (both 32 and 64 bit) with updated Nouveau driver.