X is consuming ~100 GiB of RAM(!)

[Felix Miata]

Ewen Chan composed on 2017-12-07 11:22 (UTC-0500):...

> My early subjective analysis (with this mgag200 blacklist) puts the time it
> takes to run the simulations now on par with Windows and Windows just
> worked (properly) like this from the get go.

> People keep talking about great and wonderful Linux is, but this experience
> has been anything but....

G200eW is an edge case gfxchip, not something kernel, Xorg and driver developers
use. Unless Matrox or those who do use the G200eW get involved with the devel
process, reporting problems as they notice them, you cannot expect decent, if
any, support.

As it turns out, there is one SUSE dev who has shown interest in the MGA driver
(see bug I already mentioned), but as long as you are using an old out-of-support
openSUSE version, trying to get him to help is a waste of time. Server 15.x and
kernel 3.12 are well past their support lives on openSUSE. If what you are actually
using is SLE, then you should be entitled to support from SLE.

WRT iomem=relaxed, to find out if it would help to use the modesetting driver for
this uncommon gfxchip, you will most likely either have to try it yourself, or find
the relative few other people who have tried using it, or ask Matrox, to find out
about support.

FWIW, I took a brief look at an openSUSE Tumbleweed installation last updated 9
months ago, and found the MGA driver at least usable with a G550, but the tools
aren't even recognizing it properly. Xorg.0.log reports the MGA driver is in fact
in use.

# grep RET /etc/os-release
PRETTY_NAME="openSUSE Tumbleweed"
# uname -a
Linux a-865 4.10.4-1-default #1 SMP Sat Mar 18 12:29:57 UTC 2017 (e2ef894) i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
# inxi -G -c0
Graphics:  Card: Matrox Systems Millennium G550
           Display Server: X.org 1.19.2 drivers: (unloaded: modesetting,fbdev,vesa) FAILED: mga
           tty size: 139x49 Advanced Data:
# zypper --no-refresh se -si mga
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...

S | Name           | Type    | Version   | Arch | Repository
--+----------------+---------+-----------+------+-----------
i | xf86-video-mga | package | 1.6.5-1.1 | i586 | OSS
# xrandr | head -n9
xrandr: Failed to get size of gamma for output default
Screen 0: minimum 400 x 300, current 1280 x 1024, maximum 1280 x 1024
default connected 1280x1024+0+0 0mm x 0mm
   1280x1024     75.00*   60.00
   1152x864      75.00
   1024x768      75.00    60.00    70.00
   1280x960      60.00
   960x720       60.00
   928x696       60.00
   896x672       60.00
#
-- 
"Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Whatever else you
get, get wisdom." Proverbs 4:7 (New Living Translation)

 Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

Felix Miata  ***  http://fm.no-ip.com/