[Consistent hang when exiting dam in Faultline, consisten hang and sometimes crash when entering atlas park]

1 minute ago, GM Tahquitz said:

Aaah. 🙂  Then it's just a waiting game to see if things improve or not.

Yea, more or less 😄

[Consistent hang when exiting dam in Faultline, consisten hang and sometimes crash when entering atlas park]

15 minutes ago, GM Tahquitz said:

What video card are we talking about, then?

GT 740. Just checked Nvidia's page, and it's definitely listed as supported by 450.

 

EDIT: And just in case, it's not 450 not working for CoX or Wine or anything like that it's straight up not working with everything going back to 640x480, including plain X11.

 

 

[Consistent hang when exiting dam in Faultline, consisten hang and sometimes crash when entering atlas park]

2 hours ago, GM Tahquitz said:

From what I understand, 435 is under end of life as the last update for that was Dec. 2019.

 

NVidia's proprietary driver for Linux works a touch differently than Windows.  Under Windows, regardless of card or family, you install the current driver.  When a NVidia product hits EOL, Nvidia announces the last Windows driver that card can install successfully, and that's it.  You keep running the game with no further driver updates, but any titles that insist on current drivers have a fit, that's the end.  (City of Heroes may throw a warning message, but it can be suppressed.)

 

NVidia on Linux, however, different story.  Linux driver releases are tied to chip family.  The 435 driver is for all 'legacy' cards at the moment before GTX 600.  The 440 driver works on GTX 600-RTX 3000, and the 450 driver has the same hurdle (the difference being 450 IS open source, so that driver's eventual goal is being the way forward with Wayland and Vulkan, although right now support is sketchy at the moment).  City of Heroes can run on outdated cards... so it shouldn't matter.  But on Linux, XWindows and Wayland cannot use a graphics driver that doesn't update.

 

The reason why there is a difference is because of how Linux handles kernel modules.  Kernel Modules are how Linux's monolithic kernel 'talks' to your hardware.  The kernel gives out generalized instructions, and a Linux OS compiles a set of kernel modules specific to your hardware which turns the generalized commands into signals your hardware drivers can understand for low-level control of actual hardware to happen.  As new kernels keep getting released, the driver kernel modules need to be recompiled to take effect with the new kernel. 

 

With no new updates on the 435 driver, if a Linux kernel change breaks the Nvidia driver kernel module from compiling, that prior kernel version before the break is the last version of the Linux kernel that will run with the video card on closed source drivers.  You can switch to nouveau to keep running Linux on it without replacing the card, but COH play in that driver is unusable in my experience.  There's no set schedule on when a change like this will happen or 'doomsday' to prepare for concerning when it'll happen, just no promises it'll continue to work going forward.  That means 'freezing' your system on Kernel updates, similar to a USB Live Boot drive, and rejecting new software that requires the kernel upgrades. 

 

Basically, you'd be running the system in a fashion similar to Windows 7 or XP right now.  It'll work, but not a good idea security-wise.  And as future software updates require new Linux kernels, harder and harder to maintain.  Easiest route would be to stop updating the system the moment you need to roll back to a prior kernel.  Ubuntu has LTS "point-releases" which makes this slightly easier on you, but the same principle applies.

 

I learned of this with my ancient gaming laptop (Bought in 2009, still works!) which uses the GTX 260M chipset.  Like yours, stuck on 435, no Vulkan support (can't turn on DXVK, but it still works in Wine on Mesa/Open GL only), and likewise, waiting for the end to come.  If your system dual boots into Windows 10, it's less of a doomsday... just means you can't play COH in Linux anymore on that machine.  If this is a desktop, there's another fix but it's not a cheap one: upgrade your video card.  Even out of production ones like the GTX 900/1000 series below the 60s (950/1050 and lower) or the low end 1600's will make it work again without necessarily changing out your power supply along with it.

 

Something to keep in mind.

With mine it's not as much of a doomsday, more of my laziness than obsolete vidcard. (and 435 can run Vulkan just fine with the right card, as long as the card supports it, I just checked, Vulkan and DXVK definitely work.)

 

I didn't dig deep into why 450 doesn't work, my guess is that it's just a couple years of doing weird things to Ubuntu LTS... And as you noted, kernel updates for that one will stop coming soon, so I'm going to need to re-install sometime in the next few weeks anyway.

[Consistent hang when exiting dam in Faultline, consisten hang and sometimes crash when entering atlas park]

FWIW, no issues like OP had here with Wine 5.7-9 (Lutris build, it has at least some staging stuff) 64 bit NVidia 435 drivers (because 440 and 450 don't really work on this system for some reason...)