# Conflict between xorg-server-1.11 and nVidia legacy drivers

## depontius

I've had a problem showing up for the past bit, since xorg-server-1.11.x went stable on x86:

```
WARNING: One or more updates have been skipped due to a dependency conflict:

x11-base/xorg-server:0

  (x11-base/xorg-server-1.11.2-r2::gentoo, ebuild scheduled for merge) conflicts with

    <x11-base/xorg-server-1.11 required by (x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers-173.14.31::gentoo, installed)
```

I have a system that, though it has a new enough cart, an nVidia 7300GT, doesn't reliably run anything other than nvidia-drivers-173.x.  It won't reliably run newer nvidia-drivers, and it won't reliably run nouveau.  (Actually I haven't tried newer nvidia-drivers in some time, though I spent a lot of time trying, a year or two back.  I tried nouveau just last week, staying up less than an hour or so.)

Maybe I need to try the newest stable nvidia-drivers, while masking xorg-server-1.11.  But it's possible that it's going to be necessary to keep xorg-1.10 around as long as the legacy nvidia-drivers are around.  This system is a bit of an odd duck, and old IBM M-Pro that uses Rambus.  Getting video running on it has always been a bit dicey.

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## dwbowyer

I have an Nvidia 7300GS. I was stuck on the 173.x driver series for a while when 27x series was being stabilised. From 28x. onward, I haven't had any problems using mainline, but yes you might want to mask xorg-server until you are sure the driver work for you. BUT.. that means that you have to test <284.x (I think, verify in either gentoo or nvidia forums), more recent versions of the driver are ONLY for xorg > 1.10.

I'm on nvida-drivers-290.06 and Xorg-server-1.11.2-r2. The only issue is compiz won't run and that is actually a dbus <-> xorg <-> driver stack issue.

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## Gusar

 *dwbowyer wrote:*   

> more recent versions of the driver are ONLY for xorg > 1.10.

 

Are you sure? I kinda find that hard to believe.

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## dwbowyer

Ok maybe I got it backwards. Misremembering things I thought I knew is my speciality. But I seem to recall trying to upgrade to xorg 1.11 and being told I couldn't when keeping a version of nvidia-drivers I had frozen in /etc/portage/package.mask.

 *from the change log wrote:*   

> *nvidia-drivers-290.06 (04 Nov 2011)
> 
>   04 Nov 2011; Doug Goldstein <cardoe@gentoo.org>
> 
>   +nvidia-drivers-290.06.ebuild:
> ...

 

Which means if the driver don't upgrade, you don't get the xorg-server upgrade, which is all that matters to the OP. Why I remembered that latest drivers were exclusively for newer xorg, I can't say.

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## evoweiss

Hi all,

I'm stuck in this same dilemma as I have an older (FX5200) nVidia card and thus no ability to upgrade to the latest drivers (they don't work). I am thus stuck in the 173 series. Any idea if this is going to be fixed in Xorg? It seems odd to have such breakage after all this time.

Best,

Alex

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## Gusar

It's not for X to fix. Nvidia needs to release a new driver. And such breakage isn't new nor is it odd, it happens every time X bumps ABI. When they bump ABI, the X folks also update all open drivers, but they of course can't update a closed driver.

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## dwbowyer

Nvidia most likely will update legacy drivers for such ABI changes though, so long as they continue to support the legacy drivers. They just did the same for xorg-server-1.10 last July or so, according to x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers/Changelog. But the 96.x and 173.x legacy drivers will likely always lag behind the current series.

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