Dell Latitude C840

[photoman]

Hi all,

I have an older Dell Latitude C840 running Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala. I installed the device manager yesterday (I'm still learning all this stuff) to see what this system has in it (as far as Linux is concerned). I say all that to say this: When I was using an earlier release of this distro, I tried installed the nVidia driver it said I needed in order to use other themes. When I finished installing it, the computer never worked again. The video was dark all the time. I had to reinstall everything. Now, the device manager shows the VGA controller as a Model NV17 (GeForce 440 Go) from nVidia. My understanding is that the Linux device manager can only provide hardware information and nothing more, and even then it doesn't give any indication if any of them are even working. It just reports their existence in the system.

I seem to remember their being some rumblings in days gone by about nVidia products and Linux. Is this still an issue? Also, is there any way I can get this system to work with the nVidia drivers so that I can get better graphic options? The processor itself is a Pentium 4 running at 2.4 GHz and the RAM is maxed out but I think it's only 1 GB.

The kernel is 2.6.31-22-generic and I'm using GNOME 2.28.1.

Thanks.

Mike

[Segfault]

Depending on chipset version both noveau and proprietary drivers may work, and may work well. Newest nVidia drivers probably won't work with this card.

[Segfault]

Gentoo Linux Documentation -- Gentoo Linux nVidia Guide

Newer cards such as the GeForce 400, 300, 200, 100, 9, 8, 7, and 6 series should use the latest drivers.
Older cards such as the GeForce FX 5 series should use the 173.x drivers.
Old cards such as the GeForce 3 or GeForce 4 series require the 96.x drivers.

[photoman]

I think I tried the newest drivers because I just let the system find the driver and then it never worked again. Perhaps I'll try the older drivers and see if that will work.

Thanks so much.

Mike