[Eug-lug] Thank you!

[Neil Parker]

erock23175 wrote,
>Well after all the grunts moans and hardware/software glitches I've
>managed to get a functioning Linux box running Ubuntu 7.04.....online! I
>know that this little mission would have taken months longer without
>the assistance and patience of this group THANKS!!!!!? The next goal of
>course is to get this mean machines RAM and video card upgraded. I have
>the card but when I tried to start up the machine with the new card in it,
>it would'nt load up the GUI. Any thoughts? Do I need to dl the drivers
>and load them first or what?

I presume, then, that all the PPP configuring worked?


The quick and easy way to get the Nvidia card working:

With the old card still in the machine, boot into Linux, become root,
and edit the file /etc/X11/xorg.conf.  Look for the following line:

     Driver "r128"

(I'm relying here on my memory of you saying your old card was a Rage 128.
If you don't have such a line, don't go any farther, but post the info
about your video card to the list.  The output of
"grep Driver /etc/X11/xorg.conf" would also be helpful.)

If that line IS there, change it to look like this:

     Driver "nv"

Then save the file and shut down the computer.  Pull out the old card, and
put the Nvidia in.  Then restart the computer.  If all went well, the
Gnome desktop should come up normally.


The drawback of the "nv" driver is that it doesn't support hardware 3D
accelleration.  To get that, you need Nvidia's proprietary driver.  Mr O
recommended "apt-get install nvidia", but before you do that, beware--
Nvidia's latest driver weighs in at about 15 megabytes, which will take
you nearly an hour to download over dialup (assuming you get the same
rates I get here in Eugene...if the phone lines are bad out where you
live, it will take even longer).  Either schedule it for when you have
an hour to spare, or wait until you have access to a faster connection.
(I downloaded my copy at work, and carried it home on a CD.)

If you're lucky, apt-getting nvidia will automatically update your
xorg.conf, and all you'll have to do to use the new driver is reboot.  If
you're not lucky, you may have to edit xorg.conf again, and replace

     Driver "nv"

with

     Driver "nvidia"

and then reboot.

               - Neil Parker