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Xinghao_Chen
January 31st, 2016, 01:29 AM
I installed 14.04 (started with a 12.xx ISO disk and then upgraded to 14.04) on a ThinkPad T61 which has a nVidia Quadro FX 570M GPU. But Ubuntu 14.04 reports graphics as "Gallium 0.4 on NV86" in About This Computer page. Does this mean a wrong video driver is installed?

Please advise.
kansasnoob
January 31st, 2016, 01:45 AM
You need to see if any additional drivers are available for that hardware:

http://askubuntu.com/questions/47506/how-do-i-install-additional-drivers
Xinghao_Chen
January 31st, 2016, 02:11 AM
There appears to have several nVidia drivers available but none of the names give any relevance to Quadro FX 570M. There is only one marked as tested so I chose it for install and then reboot. Now, Ubuntu reports the Graphics as Quadro NVS 140M/PCIe/SSE2. Appears to get closer.

Does this mean I better try every available nVidia driver until find a match?

Thank you.
grahammechanical
January 31st, 2016, 02:23 AM
Gallium 0.4 = open source video driver usually called Nouveau.
NV86 = Nvidia code name for that Nvidia adapter.
Quadro NVS 140M/PCIe/SSE2. = the same video adapter being described in a different way because an Nvidia driver is being used and not Nouveau.

It is not a case of the wrong driver. Nouveau is the default open source video driver for Nvidia adapters. Additional Drivers will usually offer 2 proprietary video drivers with 2 variations of it - tested & updates.

You may be tempted to try to download a newer version of the proprietary driver than that offered by Additional Drivers. Be careful. The latest proprietary drivers often lack support for older video adapters because the manufacturer has classed the adapter as obsolete.

Additional Drivers is the safe way of doing things. My video adapter is no longer supported by the latest Nvidia drivers but thanks to the Ubuntu kernel developers I can run the latest Linux kernel (4.4) with either Nouveau or an older Nvidia driver.

Regards.
Xinghao_Chen
January 31st, 2016, 04:38 PM
Thank you both for the replies - this has been an excellent learning experience for me. I am sticking with the "proprietary tested" drivers for the time being. It couldn't be the effect of a cup of Sunday morning coffee I already notice the sharp images on the screen after using the proprietary driver. Thank you very much.