Video Hardware Support

1st Official Post

    Hey guys, new user here of OE but not new to Kodi or Linux,....... :angel:

    I have ran Apache servers and forums for many years......all the way back to Mandrake days......and have used xbmc since it's conception.

    Wow!!! Have things changed or what????? LOL!!!!

    Recently I was on a Ubuntu 14.01 platform with Kodi Jarvis 16.1 and all was well......until I tried updating after support stopped for 14.01 to the latest Ubuntu 16.01.

    Apparently they stopped support for my PCIe NVidia GT 640........as I use to be able to install and run right outta the box with Ubuntu 14.01 and 15.01.

    So I decided to try OE and of course was blown away!!

    I'm currently using OE 6.0.3 with Legacy Support for my GT 640.....it's a AMD 64B CPU with 8Gigs of RAM

    My question is will Libre support my NVidia GT 640?

    And if so, which version would be best?

    It seems from what I have read that Libre is the better option here as it is more actively supported.

    Thanks!!

    • Official Post

    The GT640 should be fine. Even my GT520 is still supported. I doubt that OpenELEC has dropped support for it.

    Anyways....just use the generic 7.0.2 build if you want to use LibreELEC with Kodi 16.1.

    Btw. there was never a Ubuntu 14.01, 15.01 or 16.01. Ubuntu is released for the specific year in April or October. That means, the releases are called 14.04/14.10, 15.04/15.10 or 16.04/16.10. Just to make that clear ;)

    Ya, I realized I muffed the version numbers as I was to lazy to go look and see......my memory recall isnt what it used to be!! LOL!!

    But thanks for the corrections, and that is awesome news that my Gt 640 is still supported!!

    Do you know if the new Alpha builds would also support that video card?

    Thanks Davu for your help and information!!

    Any tips on getting it to work?

    I get the same two errors on both version 7.0.2 and the Alpha build which is: failed to start xorg server and a dependency not met.....

    It will just stop and hang after it tries and fails to start xorg

    I suspect it is the driver version but not really sure at this point.

    I am also guessing I would need to make changes to my USB install drive since I cant get a successful live boot or install.

    Edited once, last by Bullet2112 (December 7, 2016 at 2:08 AM).

    Yep, tried that image as well.

    It can't start xorg.....same error.

    The legacy NVidia build of OE works great.......I wish I knew the differences between that build and this LE build in regards to xorg.service and the video driver used.

    Also per the instructions over at OE it states that the GT 640 card is listed as being supported by both the legacy build and the generic build........but I found that to NOT be true.......as the legacy build works and the generic build does not........

    Edited once, last by Bullet2112 (December 7, 2016 at 2:16 AM).

    You can try to switch to legacy drivers yourself:

    • Get access to your LE installation without xorg (enable ssh before update or add "textmode" boot parameter).
    • Find the GT640 device id with "lspci -nn" -> [10de:XXXX]
    • "cp /usr/lib/udev/rules.d/96-nvidia.rules /storage/.config/udev.rules.d/"
    • edit /storage/.config/udev.rules.d/96-nvidia.rules, find the line with 'ATTRS{device}=="0xXXXX" ...' and delete it
    • reboot