i get no X

[Dozer]

on fresh install of debian etch (twice in the last 24 hours), with my recently aquired 8800gt, i get no X.
and because i don't have perfect instructions for a manual nvidia install sitting in front of me, it's a HUGE pain. My old 6800 and my less-old 8600gts worked fine with the oss nv drivers, but not the 8800gt.

Maybe if someone had helped with my shared ntfs storage drive problem, i wouldn't have had to mess up my debian install... twice in one day! :string-of-explitives:

so now i'm back in vista with no working linux and no storage drive... again...

yay.

[oz]

Here's a HowTo that might help you to get your nvidia card working. It's written for Ubuntu, but you should be able to convert it for Debian.

The nvidia drivers were only released about a month ago for the 8800 cards, so there are still lots of problems for some users.

[Dozer]

thanx for the suggestion+link.

with my experience so far, debian's (etch) built-in "nv" stuff doesn't play nice with the 8800gt (probably due to being so new). Each time i've had to do some drastic change, rendering my system unbootable (ie: kernel-upgrade-beyond-stable-repos-attempts, reinstalls, etc.) the debian install finishes with zero functioning gui, so every part of the nvidia* install has to be done from the command line. This may not be the case with lenny(testing) or sid(unstable), but it is with Etch(stable) due to Debian's super strict stability testing. Not being a linux guru, i found it rather difficult to basically feel around in the dark for a properly installed nvidia driver, as i'm sure many other linuxnoobs would.