HOWTO: NVIDIA driver with Breezy kernels in Hoary

[NZ-Wanderer]

Probably I didn't get you were trying to use 7676 and you had installed 7667 before. I thought it was the other way round.
Why do you want to install 7676? I don't recommend it because its buggy for some cards. (I'm running 7667)

Well, lets put it this way, I like to try things out... (thought you might be able to tell that by a newbie running Breezy ) - I have heard both good and bad reports of the new drivers, and thought I would see for myself as I not seen anything mentioned about the FX5900XT which I am running..
Might take your advise tho and stay away from 7676 for now until I do a bit of research over on the Nvidia and Guru3D forums

One other little thing I might mention in passing too...
I originally installed the 7667 drivers using Synaptic, and it never installed properly (in the nvidia gui I only had 1 screen of options, not the 1 screen of 9 options I have now after using your guide..) - so your guide installed everything properly whereas Synaptic didn't.

Thanks for all the help and tips etc tho, much appreciated

[tseliot]

Well, lets put it this way, I like to try things out... (thought you might be able to tell that by a newbie running Breezy ) - I have heard both good and bad reports of the new drivers, and thought I would see for myself as I not seen anything mentioned about the FX5900XT which I am running..
Might take your advise tho and stay away from 7676 for now until I do a bit of research over on the Nvidia and Guru3D forums
One other little thing I might mention in passing too...
I originally installed the 7667 drivers using Synaptic, and it never installed properly (in the nvidia gui I only had 1 screen of options, not the 1 screen of 9 options I have now after using your guide..) - so your guide installed everything properly whereas Synaptic didn't.
Thanks for all the help and tips etc tho, much appreciated

The driver in Synaptic might not work (I haven't tried it myself but I've read some complaints) as Breezy is not the stable version yet. I'm happy the guide worked for you and I look forward to support Breezy users better when Breezy is stable (I'm running Hoary because I need a stable system to write my thesis).

[hanover.fiste]

Because if you go to nvidia forums you can see all the problems they cause. There's no improvement if you don't have a Geforce 7800.

If you go to the nvnews forums (nvidia doesn't have any forums of its own), you'll see people having problems with *every* release. And since I do have a 7800, having to recompile my own deb with the 7676 was kind of annoying. I fail to see why both can't be offered. Especially when you look at all the people having problems with xid errors on the 7667.

[tseliot]

If you go to the nvnews forums (nvidia doesn't have any forums of its own), you'll see people having problems with *every* release. And since I do have a 7800, having to recompile my own deb with the 7676 was kind of annoying. I fail to see why both can't be offered. Especially when you look at all the people having problems with xid errors on the 7667.

Of course they are not "nvidia forums", I call them in this way so as to be understood.

If you are referring to the drivers in Synaptic I'm not responsible for that. I'm not a developer, I'm just a user like you who wants to make users' life a bit easier.

[benjy]

HI there, first of all tseliot thank you very much for you howto - I learnt a lot!

However... not enough it seems...

After spending quite some time actually getting the nvidia driver to install I finally did - followed all the rest of your instructions to the letter I started gdm.

Only to be faced with a blank white screen... a little demoralising!

My graphics card is an fx 5200 agp. I wanted to use the nvidia drivers as everything is very slow using the nv driver - scrolling down a page in firefox using a fixed background is just embarrassing...

INterestingly - starting ubuntu in recovery mode the white screen changes to the nvidia bootscreen but then hangs all the same.

I'm also running a standard installed breezy (nothing done to it except updated).

To be honest, I don't really know what else you need to know to help me so I hope you can tell me what you need.

Thanks again for the howto

[tseliot]

HI there, first of all tseliot thank you very much for you howto - I learnt a lot!
However... not enough it seems...
After spending quite some time actually getting the nvidia driver to install I finally did - followed all the rest of your instructions to the letter I started gdm.
Only to be faced with a blank white screen... a little demoralising!
My graphics card is an fx 5200 agp. I wanted to use the nvidia drivers as everything is very slow using the nv driver - scrolling down a page in firefox using a fixed background is just embarrassing...
INterestingly - starting ubuntu in recovery mode the white screen changes to the nvidia bootscreen but then hangs all the same.
I'm also running a standard installed breezy (nothing done to it except updated).
To be honest, I don't really know what else you need to know to help me so I hope you can tell me what you need.
Thanks again for the howto

Boot in recovery mode
nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Add the lines in red (NOT the one in blue) at this section of the file:

Section "Device"
Identifier "NVIDIA Corporation NV40 [GeForce 6200 TurboCache]"
Driver "nvidia"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
Option "NvAGP" "0"
Option "RenderAccel" "Off"
Option "IgnoreDisplayDevices" "DFP,TV"
Option "NoRenderExtension" "Off"
Option "Accel" "Off"
Option "AllowGLXWithComposite" “Off”

EndSection

ONLY IF it doesn't work you can ADD the LINE IN BLUE

[tpischke]

Probably wishful thinking, but given the frequency of installing the nvidia binary drivers and configuring xorg to work properly, wouldn't it be reasonable to provide some sort of wizard to assist in the installation so people wouldn't have to struggle with this when setting up/upgrading ubuntu? For instance, the Windows Wireless Drivers utility in Breezy is brilliant. Would be nice to see something similar for the Nvidia drivers.

I had the drivers working okay under Hoary after a few hours of struggle to get xorg working and to get the correct screen resolutions, but I'm reluctant to keep repeating the process. I'm sure the time required to develop the wizard would be well rewarded in time/frustration saved by users with an NVIDIA graphics card.

[tseliot]

Probably wishful thinking, but given the frequency of installing the nvidia binary drivers and configuring xorg to work properly, wouldn't it be reasonable to provide some sort of wizard to assist in the installation so people wouldn't have to struggle with this when setting up/upgrading ubuntu? For instance, the Windows Wireless Drivers utility in Breezy is brilliant. Would be nice to see something similar for the Nvidia drivers.
I had the drivers working okay under Hoary after a few hours of struggle to get xorg working and to get the correct screen resolutions, but I'm reluctant to keep repeating the process. I'm sure the time required to develop the wizard would be well rewarded in time/frustration saved by users with an NVIDIA graphics card.

It depends on NVIDIA. However there are some unofficial projects (http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=86) such as Easy Ubuntu and Automatix which can install the drivers (from Ubuntu repositories) from a GUI making the process easier.

[FLeiXiuS]

The only problem I have noticed it performance. I'm getting poor poor performance now.

[stanner]

Stanner, try re-installing the drivers..

sudo CC=gcc-3.4; sudo export CC; sudo sh /path/to/driver.sh

I've had this problem in the past.

FLeiXiuS
I have actually tried that a few times with both the 7676 and 7667 driver, I currently have the 7667 driver installed.