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(SOLVED) HTPC problem

Graphical Environments, Managers, Multimedia & Desktop questions.
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MH
Posts: 204
Joined: 2008-09-20 15:16
Location: The Matrix

(SOLVED) HTPC problem

#1 Post by MH »

My HTPC is dated, over 8 years old, so I've had to rely on S/PDIF audio passthrough to get surround sound. I recently subscribed to Netflix only to discover whatever they use to encode audio is not supported by S/PDIF. I decided to upgrade my video card so I could use the onboard audio decoding of modern video cards over HDMI. Having used NVidia cards with very few problems under Linux over the years, and having read numerous conflicting reports regarding AMD cards under Linux, I decided to go with NVidia.

Unfortunately, after installing my new NVidia card (GT 1030) and the appropriate drivers, my HTPC booted to a black screen, no cursor, no keyboard input. This was NOT due to nouveau being present. I have always used the proprietary NVidia drivers in the past due to issues with the nouveau driver, mostly with gaming. Since I don't use my HTPC for gaming, and since nouveau drivers have reportedly been much improved, I decided to purge the Nvidia drivers and try out the nouveau driver. The nouveau driver left me at a console prompt with impossibly small fonts.

After much searching on the Internet, I discovered two things: 1) the nouveau driver does not work with newer NVidia cards; 2) the current NVidia driver in Debian Stretch (375.66) does not support the NVidia card I purchased. More searching suggested the 384.69 driver would work. Unfortunately, that driver is still considered "experimental". I was loathe to do it, but had no alternative other than replacing my new card with my old one. So I made the jump.

I was pleasantly surprised to see the new module compile and install. Unfortunately, my HTPC still booted into a black screen.

My HTPC is configured with KDE and Kodi. More searching on the Internet led me to discover problems reported with newer NVidia cards and versions of KDE prior to 4.10.5. The problem was reported as fixed in 4.10.5, the same version currently in the Debian testing branch. I decided to bite the bullet and upgrade my system from stable to testing, including removing and reinstalling the NVidia driver from experimental.

The upgrade went better than expected. No problems. Except I still can't boot to a working desktop with the GT 1030. In every case, the Nvidia drivers compile without error and are loaded at boot. The driver reportedly supports the GT 1030, and the problems reported with KDE are supposedly solved with the version I'm running (4.10.5).

Can anyone provide any insight? Anyone with a similar experience? As it is, I've had to revert to my old video card so I can use my HTPC, albeit Netflix is stereo only. Both money and time wasted.
Last edited by MH on 2017-10-05 08:05, edited 1 time in total.
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MH
Posts: 204
Joined: 2008-09-20 15:16
Location: The Matrix

Re: HTPC problem

#2 Post by MH »

Problem solved. The KDE problem apparently had something to do with Kwin. Even though testing installs KDE 5.10.5, it's still using an older version of Kwin. I installed the kwin-x11 package from sid, along with the nvidia-driver (384.69) from experimental and all is now well.
DOS > Windows > Corel > RH > Libranet > Xandros > SuSE > Debian:KDE

"It is hard to free fools from the chains they revere." --Voltaire

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