Exiting X to install nVIDIA driver

[MTK]

I downloaded the nVIDIA driver for my video card but it says that I need to exit the X window system to do that, but I don't know how.

I see that "Ctrl + Alt + F1" is the terminal that is running X, so I went to "Ctrl + Alt + F2" but it still said X is rinning, even though it was in a different terminal.

[coopstah13]

Switching to a different VT doesn't stop X from running, you have to stop X with your display manager in a VT.

[Rubberman]

What distribution of Linux are you using? If it is RedHat/Fedora/Centos or derived from such, then you need to change your /etc/inittab initdefault entry to runlevel 3 instead of 5 and reboot the system. That will boot you into a standard console (no X server running) where you can login as root and run the nVidia installer. Then, change the runlevel back to 5 and reboot again. Change this line in /etc/inittab:

id:5:initdefault:

to this

id:3:initdefault:

Then reboot, login as root, and run the nVidia installer. After that, set it back to

id:5:initdefault:

and reboot.

[MTK]

I figured it out already, I just wasn't in time to post.

The reason I am installing an nVIDIA driver now is that the Radeon driver would not work and Rubberman said he uses nVIDIA and they have good Linux support, so I got an nVIDIA card from another computer and it installed quite easily once I figured out the turn off X thing.

Anyway I finally have working graphics acceleration and can start setting up Fedora on my computer.