Video Card Problems With Suse Linux 10.2 (NVIDIA)

[asharmaearth411]

I have two (2x) NVIDIA 6600GT (VGA-mode) video cards installed on my system that are in SLI-mode. I installed SuSE Linux 10.2 on my system with Windows XP. I have only monitor, thus; it is only connected to my main video card. After the SuSE installation was completed, the system auto-logged into my user account, however; nothing displayed on my screen. Seconds later, I was able to see the operating system. However; it was not the actual interface. There was a solid blue background, the start menu did not properly display, nor did any of the actual colors of the taskbar display from what I saw from the screenshots on OSDir.com. I was trying to find what was the problem, until I connected my monitor to the second video card instead. And there, my problems were solved for the display part. All of the appropriate icons, background, etc were displayed. However; now if I need to log onto Windows XP, I need to switch my connection from the second video card to the first (my primary one) by manually disconnecting and connecting the VGA cable to the first one. I installed the latest NVIDIA Drivers on Linux (x86) from the NVIDIA website, yet that did not solve this problem. Does anyone have a clue what can be going on here? I feel it has something to do with "Screen 1 and Screen 2" settings, except from the way I tried, that still did not work, because I was not able to save the X configuration file. I am only a beginner in Linux, and there can be more to this. Please help so I can avoid the hassle between connecting and disconnecting on my video card(s). Thanks.

[gogalthorp]

Well not sure about the problem but you need to be root in order to change a system config file. in a console type

su
then your root password (note this will not echo to the screen!)

then edit the file. The easiest editor for newbies is nano so type

nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf

It is always best to make a backup before changing a system file just in case

cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.back

[scrarfussi]

why dont you just take out the one graphics card do you really need it i think it would solve all your problems

[asharmaearth411]

The thing is that I have two video cards for my SLI-configuration under Windows XP, and in addition; I was informed that SuSE ironically supports SLI as well.

I was able to get SuSE on just one video card today by not installing all SAX2 packages. However; there were certain packages that needed this software, especially the KDE-Basis package. Therefore, there still was not a success, except for the fact that may be I should install the NVIDIA-software instead of the X11.

Question: Does Linux really have to run on a X11-configuration?

[gogalthorp]

Only if you want a GUI. Xwindows is the basis for most if not all GUI's in *nix.