Hondanut Posted May 19, 2003 Share Posted May 19, 2003 Hi all. This is my first real post. I have been reading the threads in this post for a few weeks now. I have installed Mandrake 9.1 dual boot with windows xp professional on a pIII 750 with 256 meg of ram and a nvidia mx400 with 64 meg of ram on it. I have been running it now for about 2 weeks. I can be classed as a noob for sure. As far as windows goes I am fairly confident in my abilities with it. Others must think so as well for every so often a pc box is dropped at my door to fix. As for Linux I am a little lost. I have a few other questions for this forum but for now my main concern is to get my video card working to its full potential. So far I have dowloaded the current drivers from nvida's website. Ok, so now what do I do with them? Keep in mind here you will have to spell a lot of things out for me in plain english. Just a foot note here. I really like Mandrake. So far we are getting along well. Most things I have been able to figure out on my own. The fourm here is friendly and is well suited to noob's. All the other forums I have seen are way too technical. Thus making a noob feel intimidated before they even begin. Keep up the great work. If the general public gets wind of this forum Bill Gates might be more than just a little lighter in his pocket book. Thanks for having me here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ThunderRiver Posted May 19, 2003 Share Posted May 19, 2003 Installing nVidia driver is quite a bit tricky, and I can't really say I am experienced with it. I have heard two sides story, whereas the distro maker suggest user to use the proprietary driver from nVidia, and then BSD/Linux geeks say that don't ever use the driver from nVidia, and suggest you use something else because nVidia modifies your OpenGL library, which often makes your system freezes up..Well, it is real tough to bring up x11 already, and I still have to deal with drivers? Someone really should have a nice guide for installing drivers just for nVidia lol Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted May 19, 2003 Share Posted May 19, 2003 I think Peachy is the one who gave the link to a script and instructions on the new nVidia drivers for Linux that works for Mandrake, RedHat and SuSE.Let me check ....OK, I found the posting and here's the Link that Peachy provided on it:nVidia Display Driver for Linux. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peachy Posted May 19, 2003 Share Posted May 19, 2003 (edited) Hmm.I have had no trouble installing NVIDIA's Linux drivers on for my ASUS V7100 Pro (GeForce 2 MX-400) in both Red Hat 8.0 or 9. In fact, when I installed RH9 and downloaded the Linux NVIDIA Update driver from here it was very painless. Just follow the instructions when you run the script. My benchmark: Quake 3 Arena downloadable Linux demo running map demo001 gives me about 80fps at 800x600 16bpp default settings on a Pentium III 700 with 512MB RAM.------------------------LilBambi, your so quick! Thanks. Edited May 19, 2003 by Peachy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted May 19, 2003 Share Posted May 19, 2003 Peachy --Glad to be of help. Was hoping you would find this Topic and add to it as well to give some info on how it worked for you. But wanted to make sure we at least got the link in here to get them started. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruno Posted May 19, 2003 Share Posted May 19, 2003 Hi HondanutI did already see back there in the test area that you would end up here ! Welcome again !Here is a thread with an easy howto for Nvidia drivers in Mandrake 9.1:http://www.scotsnewsletter.com/forums/inde...t=ST&f=14&t=292I had to dig deep, was quiet some time ago. ( there are more posts then you see on first sight, just change the 30 days at the bottom to 60 ) Bruno Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hondanut Posted May 19, 2003 Author Share Posted May 19, 2003 Ok thanks. I really appreciate the links. I will give it a go later tonight when I have a bit more time. I will let you know how it goes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hondanut Posted May 20, 2003 Author Share Posted May 20, 2003 I finally got it. It took a while but the drivers are now installed and running great. The biggest problem I think I had was tring to get out of X to be able to install the drivers. So I booted to failsafe and installed them from there. Big MISTAKE After I changed the XF86Config-4 file to read "nvidia". The next boot the screen flickered a few times and then went to plain text. I dont think it works if you install the drivers from failsafe. So when it put me in the text only mode I installed them again from there and presto it runs like a charm.. I'm one happy boy. Thanks for all the help. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted May 20, 2003 Share Posted May 20, 2003 HondanutExcellent! Way to go! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruno Posted May 20, 2003 Share Posted May 20, 2003 Well done Hondanut !Next time you wat text-mode and out of X do: Ctrl+Alt+F1 To return to X do : Alt+F7Great job. Bruno Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GolfProRM Posted May 20, 2003 Share Posted May 20, 2003 Glad you got it to work Hondanut! You should notice quite a difference in your system performance (I sure did!) because your hardware will now be doing the work. :)Just a tip to make the installation a bit easier (for if/when you decide to install it again) There's an easy way to get into the text-only mode (and this is the proper way) To change your system so it doesn't boot into X automatically, you need to change the runlevel. The easiest way to do this is to edit the inittab file. Use vi and type this at the command prompt: vi /etc/inittabBelow the comments at the top of the file you should come across a line that says runlevel. Look for the number '5' and change it to '3'. To edit the file, press the i key to start editing your file. When you've changed it, press [escape] then press the semi-colon key, then 'w' and then 'q'. That means write to disk, and then quit.When you reboot, this will take you to the text login prompt... just login there and run the installation... you can then change the runlevel back and reboot back into KDE... OR you can also use this login method as a more secure login.... you can always have it boot this way and then login and run the command <startx> (without brackets) to open your default XWin (KDE/Gnome or otherwise)... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hondanut Posted May 20, 2003 Author Share Posted May 20, 2003 Wow thanks Bruno. That works like a charm. Wish I had known that last night. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruno Posted May 20, 2003 Share Posted May 20, 2003 I think I will add that one to ¨The Tips¨ tonight. It was so obvious to me that I did not even think about it.Glad you discovered something new. Bruno Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ThunderRiver Posted May 20, 2003 Share Posted May 20, 2003 In SuSE (though it may not apply to Mandrake), you turn off X before installation nVidia driver.You press Alt + F1login as roottype the following command to turn off Xinit 3browse to the direcotory where the driver is located. Execute it with shand then modify XF86Config and switch the driver from "nv" to "nvidia" and typeinit 5 to return to GUI mode. It is very simple, no reboot required Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GolfProRM Posted May 20, 2003 Share Posted May 20, 2003 Thanks ThunderRiver! Didn't know it could be done w/o a reboot like that! Haven't tried it on Mandrake yet, but the settings are basically the same, so should work... Makes installing the driver very easy! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prelude76 Posted May 20, 2003 Share Posted May 20, 2003 In SuSE (though it may not apply to Mandrake), you turn off X before installation nVidia driver.You press Alt + F1login as roottype the following command to turn off Xinit 3browse to the direcotory where the driver is located. Execute it with shand then modify XF86Config and switch the driver from "nv" to "nvidia" and typeinit 5 to return to GUI mode. It is very simple, no reboot required yeah, i did the same thiing to install my nvidia in SuSE. one question. just to satisfy my curiosity, what is that init3 and init5 thing? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruno Posted May 20, 2003 Share Posted May 20, 2003 Runlevels Prelude, you can read about them in ¨the Tips¨ page 5 at the bottom. Bruno Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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