My new graphics card...

[TheMatrix]

Hey ppls,

I recently got an nVidia GeForce FX 5500. It works okay. DVI, S-Video, VGA, that all works okay.

The only problem is, the graphics card supports 3D(D'oh), but I don't think that Fedora 14 does. Every time I try to view the 3D version of a part in KiCad, it just closes. The GNOME desktop effects setting says that I need 3D hardware acceleration. I did what the nVdia website told me: download the driver. Okay, I did that. Then run the driver as root with the command sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-173.14.28-pkg1.run. So I did that. The error messages are below.

For the first error message:
You appear to be running an X server; please exit X before installing. For further details, please see the section INSTALLING THE NVIDIA DRIVER in the section available on the Linux driver download page at www.nvidia.com.
Right. So I did that. After the whole run-around with all of the pages, I still can't find out any way to safely stop the X server. I have tried /sbin/init 3, but that hasn't helped. killallX doesn't seem like the right choice either.

For the second one:
Installation has failed. Please see the file '/var/log/nvidia-installer.log' for details. You may find suggestions on fixing installation problems in the README available on the Linux driver download page at www.nvidia.com.
Tried that. Read the file, it is attached.

I've searched, but couldn't find anything. Why must things always be so difficult?:confused:

[Commander Thor]

Why must things always be so difficult?:confused:
Because it's Linux. ;)


A quick search says you need the drivers provided by nouveau, not by nVidia, for 3D to work in Fedora.

[TheMatrix]

Because it's Linux. ;)


A quick search says you need the drivers provided by nouveau, not by nVidia, for 3D to work in Fedora.

Yeah, I dun think so. I couldn't even find the "nouveau" drivers.

[Commander Thor]

Yeah, I dun think so. I couldn't even find the "nouveau" drivers.

First result on a search for 'nouveau': http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/

[darkwoon]

First thing: forget Nouveau - it is meant to be an opensource replacement of the Nvidia (closed-source) drivers, but currently, support for 3D from it is sketchy at best, and it should only be used for 2D.

Second thing: forget the NVIDIA binary installer. Fedora, like most linux distributions, provides its own packaging of the drivers. Using the binary installer could result in conflicts between both.

Third thing: Since the drivers are closed-source, they are part of the RPM Fusion (http://rpmfusion.org/) package repository - in short, that's where all software with non-free licenses are stored for Fedora. You can find the explanations on how to enable Fusion as a package source for your system here (http://rpmfusion.org/Configuration).

Fourth thing: The package you need to install is kmod-nvidia-173xx . You can install it for example by using yum:

$ su -
# yum install kmod-nvidia-173xx
# reboot

You can find a better, in-depth Howto to install NVidia cards under Fedora here (http://rpmfusion.org/Howto/nVidia).

Hope this helps!

A quick search says you need the drivers provided by nouveau, not by nVidia, for 3D to work in Fedora.
FYI, From Nouveau's website:

Any 3D functionality that might exist is still unsupported. Do not ask for instructions to try it. But you can read GalliumHowto in case you are brave enough. (...) Accelerated OpenGL, although progressing, is not yet supported.

For having tried those drivers on my own system a couple times, I can say that you *really*, really shouldn't try to use Nouveau for anything 3D-related. Unless if you want to work on debugging the driver itself.

[TheMatrix]

Unfortunately, after doing what you said(or rather, what rpmfusion said), my computer crashed. It would start, but it wouldn't show any graphics activity. Not even Ctrl-Alt-F2 would work.
So I dumped the Fedora installation. Right now, I'm installing openSUSE 11.3.

I hope that will work. I'll let you guys know later.

Edit: Nope, I don't think it will. openSUSE's network things worked while installing, but then magically stopped. I can add new network connections until I die, but I don't think that will work. I'm thinking of going to F14(at least that works, more or less), but then we have the problem of the 3D stuff. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH! So annoying this is!!

Edit to the edit: openSUSE's 3D things actually work!! I'm so happy!!


To any mods who happen to be reading this: :locked: (hint, hint...)