Bug #16455

List in known issues all the Nvidia cards that might be affected

Added by mercedes508 2019-02-11 12:30:05 . Updated 2019-08-21 09:44:50 .

Status:
Resolved
Priority:
Normal
Assignee:
intrigeri
Category:
Target version:
Start date:
2019-02-11
Due date:
% Done:

0%

Feature Branch:
doc/16455-complete-nvidia-lists
Type of work:
End-user documentation
Blueprint:

Starter:
Affected tool:
Deliverable for:

Description

hey,

we received several reports from users telling us that their GPU isn’t listed in the GPU known issues page, when it actually is.

The thing is that they are looking for something like “NVidia Geforce
GTX 1060” which as a precise model doesn’t appear, even though the NVidia Pascal familiy is (and the previous example belongs to this familiy).


Subtasks


Related issues

Blocks Tails - Feature #16711: Core work 2019Q3 → 2019Q4: Technical writing Resolved 2016-01-08

History

#1 Updated by sajolida 2019-02-20 21:13:36

  • Assignee changed from sajolida to intrigeri
  • QA Check set to Info Needed

I built the content of this page based on the information had previously on /support/known_issues.

For example, in the case of the Nvidia Pascal family we had written (by intrigeri in a908d2b59c):

This may appear with the
[Nvidia Pascal family](https://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/CodeNames/#nv130familypascal)
of graphic adapters.

The “may” lead me to believe that maybe not all Pascal graphics cards were affected. I could copy the table from https://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/CodeNames/#nv110familymaxwell but we might end up with wrong information on our page; or maybe not, but I personally don’t have this information.

The workflow that I imagined when we built this page was to have help desk and foundations team report graphics cards that needs to be added to this list every time a new one pops up.

But maybe the foundation team can help me be more affirmative, even for graphics cards that were not reported yet.

I’ll let intrigeri confirm whether we should preemptively add cards to this list or not.

#2 Updated by intrigeri 2019-02-21 08:17:21

  • Assignee changed from intrigeri to sajolida
  • QA Check changed from Info Needed to Dev Needed

> The workflow that I imagined when we built this page was to have help desk and foundations team report graphics cards that needs to be added to this list every time a new one pops up.

Right. We did not do a very good job at that so far. I’m not sure what’s the ratio between “I don’t receive conclusive enough info from help desk” and “I forget to add to the list”. I’m happy to be more careful/focused on this front in the future and see how it goes :)

> But maybe the foundation team can help me be more affirmative, even for graphics cards that were not reported yet.
> I’ll let intrigeri confirm whether we should preemptively add cards to this list or not.

I think you have described the trade-off correctly but I’m afraid I have no hard data to help you decide what’s best.

What I can tell is:

  • Not all graphics cards in a given NVIDIA family are supported equally: it does happen that a given card works fine out of the box, while another one needs a documented workaround, while another one won’t work even with the documented workaround.
  • I suspect very few users would read this page and apply a potentially unneeded workaround (that might actually break stuff) if their hardware works out of the box. So in my non-tech-writer opinion, I think the occurrence rate × impact of confusing users by listing graphics cards that we lack info about is much lower than the occurrence rate × impact of the problem this ticket is about.

#3 Updated by sajolida 2019-03-15 11:01:52

  • blocks Feature #15941: Core work 2018Q4 → 2019Q2: Technical writing added

#4 Updated by sajolida 2019-03-15 11:02:46

  • Subject changed from GPU known issues unclear for users to List in known issues all the Nvidia cards that might be affected
  • Assignee deleted (sajolida)
  • QA Check deleted (Dev Needed)

Ok, then I propose that we copy the replace the links to the nouveau.freedesktop.org website with the full HTML table that’s in there.
And introduce it with something like “Other graphics cards in the $CODE family ($NAME) might be affected:”

@cbrownstein: if you want to give it a try, please assigning yourself the ticket and spend at most 1 hour on this before sending me your work for review, even if uncompleted.

#5 Updated by sajolida 2019-07-18 17:00:35

  • blocks Feature #16711: Core work 2019Q3 → 2019Q4: Technical writing added

#6 Updated by sajolida 2019-07-18 17:00:38

  • blocked by deleted (Feature #15941: Core work 2018Q4 → 2019Q2: Technical writing)

#7 Updated by sajolida 2019-07-30 17:19:14

  • Status changed from Confirmed to In Progress

Applied in changeset commit:tails|bcd034067ea84fc1a800100ab1727b90ab8e60bf.

#8 Updated by sajolida 2019-07-30 17:19:31

  • Status changed from In Progress to Needs Validation
  • Assignee set to intrigeri
  • Target version set to Tails_3.16
  • Feature Branch set to doc/16455-complete-nvidia-lists

Here is a branch. Please have a look!

#9 Updated by intrigeri 2019-07-30 21:21:07

  • Status changed from Needs Validation to In Progress

Applied in changeset commit:tails|a8670ee3d04da2b6a390974b1d63dade8b300ca8.

#10 Updated by intrigeri 2019-07-30 21:26:12

  • Assignee changed from intrigeri to sajolida

> Here is a branch.

Merged!

Did you also define & set up a process to keep this info up-to-date? (Apart for older families, NVIDIA will keep releasing new graphics cards.)

#11 Updated by sajolida 2019-08-01 18:17:52

I added notes about this in f3bc407328.

I was not really enthusiastic in the first place at the idea copying
these whole tables and making our page more noisy. So if keeping them
up-to-date has to be more complicated than that I’m tempted to revert
bcd034067e and reject this ticket instead.

#12 Updated by sajolida 2019-08-19 12:32:32

  • Status changed from In Progress to Needs Validation
  • Assignee changed from sajolida to intrigeri

Please close this ticket if you’re happy with f3bc407328. Otherwise either propose something else or I’ll remove these lists.f3bc407328

#13 Updated by intrigeri 2019-08-21 09:44:50

  • Status changed from Needs Validation to Resolved

Thank you! Only time can tell whether it’ll be sufficient, let’s try :)