Please Help, There Are So Many Crap Driver Installation Guides

[SubPop79]

Hello everyone! I'm Matt and I am new to this and I am also very new Linux!

Last week my Windows Vista OS bit the dust, and seeing as I was tired of all it's crashes, security problems, etc, I switched to Fedora 12, as I have heard good things.

I like it a lot so far, but I am getting very frustated with installing drivers. I have already reformatted 3 times because of botched installations of my Nvidia GeForce 8600M GT driver.

I will not give up!

Right now I am currently having problems installing the Linux Driver for both the Geforce 8600M GT and my sound card, and can't find a coherent installation guide for either.

The sound card's driver file was downloaded from Realtek and is named LinuxPkg_5.14rc5.tar.bz2.

The Nvidia driver is named NVIDIA-Linux-x86-190.53-pkg1.run.
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Downloading those 2 files is as far as I am going with the installation process untill I get some help. I have very limited knowledge of Linux and could really use some good instructions on how to get my computer operational. Please do not leave out a single detail, if you choose to help me, and please do!

In the mean time, if I screw something up, how can I back everything up so that all my progress in Fedora is saved?

[oz]

Welcome to the forums!

What guides have you tried?

You'd probably be better off to use YUM to install nvidia drivers.

Have you tried installing them using the RPMfusion repos?

Fedora Nvidia Driver Install Guide

[reed9]

Hello.

For your sound card, can you post the output of of

/sbin/lspci -vnn | grep -i audio
head -n 1 /proc/asound/card0/codec*

Also, run

alsamixer

and make sure no channels are muted or turned all the way down. If they are, and you make changes, save with

su -c 'alsactl store'

[SubPop79]

Hello.

For your sound card, can you post the output of of

/sbin/lspci -vnn | grep -i audio
head -n 1 /proc/asound/card0/codec*

Also, run

alsamixer

and make sure no channels are muted or turned all the way down. If they are, and you make changes, save with

su -c 'alsactl store'

[Matt@MurphyLinux ~]$ /sbin/lspci -vnn | grep -i audio
00:1b.0 Audio device [0403]: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller [8086:27d8] (rev 01)
[Matt@MurphyLinux ~]$ head -n 1 /proc/asound/card0/codec*
==> /proc/asound/card0/codec#0 <==
Codec: Realtek ALC883

==> /proc/asound/card0/codec#1 <==
Codec: Generic 1543 Si3054

- - - - -

I've tried using the RPMFusion repos and installing various other things I can't name off the top of my head but none of them worked. I havn't seen that guide, so I will ty it after class.

Do I have to disable the Nouveau driver before or after the Nvidia installation or at all?

Also, Alsamixer wasn't doing anything. It just looked like an audio monitor. I do have sound, it's just the Realtek would be better, am I right?

[reed9]

Do I have to disable the Nouveau driver before or after the Nvidia installation or at all?

The guide ozar linked to has instructions for disabling the nouveau driver. (Just adding rdblacklist=nouveau to the kernel boot line in GRUB.)

Also, Alsamixer wasn't doing anything. It just looked like an audio monitor. I do have sound, it's just the Realtek would be better, am I right?

Nope, the alsa driver modules are what you get. Some people claim that OSS4 has better sound quality over alsa. I don't know if that is true or not. If you are having sound issues, there are often various options you can load with the sound module that can improve the situation, or in rare cases, building the latest version of alsa can help, as new cards and options are being added all the time.

Alsamixer is just a mixer. I was assuming you didn't have sound, and the first thing to check is that nothing is muted. But if you have sound, all is good.

[SubPop79]

Ozar, that Nvidia installation guide worked great! Some commands didn't work though, but the driver did install, but I don't know how well. Every so often my screen flickers, plus my refresh rate dropped to 50 Hz instead of what I assumed was the standard 60 Hz. But damn, these desktop effects are awesome! I could move windows all days!

Now to install the sound driver....

[devils casper]

Every so often my screen flickers, plus my refresh rate dropped to 50 Hz instead of what I assumed was the standard 60 Hz.

xorg.conf file in not configure correctly.
Post the contents of /etc/X11/xorg.conf file here.

[SubPop79]

xorg.conf file in not configure correctly.
Post the contents of /etc/X11/xorg.conf file here.

How do I enter this into the terminal?

[reed9]

It's just a text file. Open it with a text editor, gedit, kate, kwrite, whatever you have installed, and copy and paste the contents here.

Or this will show the contents in your terminal window

cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf

[oz]

How do I enter this into the terminal?

The cat command provided above by reed9 should work fine. When you get some spare time, take a look at LinuxCommand.org for some quick and easy lessons on using the Linux command line. You'll find the things you learn there to be very valuable as you progress into the world of Linux.