Which Nvidia Drivers?

[flipjargendy]

i'm running a Geforce FX Go5700 video card. i need to install the Nvidia drivers because right now i'm using indirect video support. Can anyone tell me which Nvidia drivers i should use? i think i should install 'nvidia-glx-legacy' drivers but i just want to be sure.

If these are the drivers i need what's the best way to install them? apt-get won't let me do it. It tells me that the packages may be obsolete.

Thanks

[Cabhan]

This page describes what the legacy drivers support:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_32667.html

I don't believe that your card uses the legacy drivers (my graphics card is some 4 years old and doesn't use the legacy drivers), but you can check the PCI ID (using the 'lspci' command) to determine for sure.

If apt-get won't install them for some reason, the Nvidia drivers are VERY easy to install on your own. You can download them from:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html

IA32 = 32 bit processor
IA64 = Intel 64 bit processor
AMD64 = AMD 64 bit processor

You then need to (as root), open the file /etc/inittab, and change the initdefault level from 5 to 3. Restart your computer. You will boot into a graphical environment.

Login, and (as root), navigate to wherever you downloaded the driver, and run the command "sh NVIDIA-xxxxx...". This will run the driver installation program. Assuming that all goes well, you now need to configure the X server. Follow the instructions at:

http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree8...hapter-03.html

Having done that, you can now change /etc/inittab back to initdefault 5, and restart again. All should work!

[flipjargendy]

i don't see the PCI ID... and i'm not exactly sure how to get it. i looked at the link you gave me to find out the supported cards but i don't see any number similar to any of the PCI IDs on the nvidia website.

root@Mimas:~# lspci
...
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV36 [GeForce FX Go5700] (rev a1)

root@Mimas:~# lspci -n
...
01:00.0 0300: 10de:0348 (rev a1)

[Juan Pablo]

Try with the normal drivers and if X doesn't start it will tell you in the log that you need the legacy drivers instead.

[flipjargendy]

ok, i'll just give it a shot... after installing the regular nvidia drivers last time i ran the script that automatically configures the nvidia drivers. This time i'm just going to do 'dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg'.

Hope i can reply with an all is well in a few minutes.

Thanks for all the help guys.

[flipjargendy]

No go. i had 2 choices of linux to boot to before i installed the drivers. Now i have three. Two generic versions (with recovery modes) and one that is for "386". The only one that does not boot to a command-line is the "386" version. That one boots to a screen with horizontal lines going from top to bottom. It didn't say anything about installing Legacy drivers.

In the dpkg-reconfigure app i chose nvidia for the drivers and left basically everything else default.

Any ideas?

** UPDATE **

i'm just going to keep trying different HOWTOs, these drivers should be working. There is just a step that is missing in getting them to work. i'm hoping to figure out what it is.

Thanks for the help.