Ubuntu

Upgrade to 9.04 causes powernow and usb problems

Asked by woodenplane

I am trying to upgrade from 8.04LTS to 9.04. I have a fully functional 8.04 system with dual screens from two NVIDIA cards using propriety drivers, it is a MSI K8 SLI motherboard. When I upgrade either over the net via 8.1 or try a fresh install of 9.04 everything is ok with one screen / video card as soon as I activate the nvidia drivers the system fails to boot, with errors of K8-powernow ACPI object problem (I have tried acpi=off) or a USB error of a port not being enumerated or not responding. Reloading 8.04 I can achieve a fully functioning system it also works under win XP SP3, so the hardware is not at fault.
Does anybody know what changed between 8.04 and 8.1 to cause this problem (copied into 9.04) and is it fixable I am sure I can not be the only person with two video cards in the same machine.

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peter b (b1pete) said : 		#1

804 is a solid and stable release; it is supported until 2011; my advise is - stay with it as long as possible the for all critical tasks.

if you like to have 810 and 904 please do not upgrade, do new installs on separate partitions - leave 804 alone - it ain't broken so do not try to get fancy with it. if something does not respond as you expect (as you mentioned) at least there is the good 804 to fall back on.

regards,
peter b

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woodenplane (register-sapsford) said : 		#2

Thanks for your help, I have made the decision you described not even trying 8.1 or 9.04 "if it ain't broke don't fix it". It is interesting that I have 9.04 running on an 8 year old sony laptop SRX51P (much faster than XP) and that could only be achieved by loading 6.06 and upgrading through 8.04 8.1 and 9.04, a fresh install would not work because of the absence of LCD panel, and alps trackpad drivers, which were obviously present the year 6.06 was released.

I was just wondering what the changes were that had been made to cause this problem, kernel, drivers etc will my motherboard always be incompatible from now? It will probably have been replaced by 2011 anyway.

Thanks once again.

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peter b (b1pete) said : 		#3

yes, I see your point; as you probably know, nvidia drivers are proprietary (as ati's) and because of that ubuntu - a free linux distribution - can not modify them to make them work with free software. nvidia's as well as ati's code is not made available to the free linux distributions; in the best cases the code is available maybe only in bits and pieces which is totally unsatisfactory to get good, stable linux distributions - some distros as you could see and experience - work much better with dual screens than others; the same stands true for the 3D acceleration.

as far as this topic goes, another example of proprietary drivers - broadcom wifi drivers; I remember years back when ndiswrapper was the only way to make some broadcom devices work in linux.

so, to put it in perspective, one would be v well advised if decides to go linux - free os way to check, before dishing out money, on pc's that support linux. personally I have in my household 2 desktops that I put together myself and all h'ware was handpicked; as far as video devices are concerned I elected ati's older models that are fully supported by linux free drivers and some distros have even free 3D support. for wifi devices I acquired ZyDas based chipsets. Asus eeePC's are available with linux (xandros) preinstalled but work great with ubuntu. I have 2 - one 900 and the second one 1000 model; it was v easy to replace xandros with ubuntu 804 and 810 - both are very stable and great machines to carry around; and, as a bonus, I purchased the models with SSD.

regards,
peter b