Distro That Plays Nice With The Geforce 8800

[DeChache]

Is there a distro out that there that people have working with the 8800. Ive been trying for the last week to get Ubuntu going on my machine and I have failed miserably.

I have been doing some reading on the subject and I have seen that many people have had problems getting things to run on the 8800's.

 

[B. W.]

Is there a distro out that there that people have working with the 8800. Ive been trying for the last week to get Ubuntu going on my machine and I have failed miserably.

I have been doing some reading on the subject and I have seen that many people have had problems getting things to run on the 8800's.

Have you tried installing the proprietary nVidia drivers? AFAIK, the nv driver doesn't support the 7xxx or 8xxx series, so any other distro would give you the same result.

 

[duby229]

nVidias Linux driver has full support for the 7xxx series, and should work with the 8xxx series, with new functionality being added each new release.

Just check your distro's package manager to see how to install the drivers.

 

[DeChache]

I had no problems when I was using my 7800 but now I can't get anything to load to the desktop. Ill try a live disk or do an alternate install and each time it takes me to the command prompt.

So I say ok I set xserver to use generic drivers so I can install the new ones. That kindof works but then I cant get any of them to finish loading the desktop. I still kind of a Linux noob and I have no Idea how I would install drivers threw the command prompt.

 

[As I Lay Dying]

I believe feisty fawn's nvidia-glx pacakage is the version that supports the 8800 cards, however, you can install via the alternate disc (does not matter which version I will tell you how to, for feisty or for a previous version), and when you get to the login screen, press ctrl+alt+f1, login, then if you are using feisty fawn, follow (if you decided to use edgy or older then skip this part);

sudo apt-get install nvidia-glx

^^ make sure there are no errors!!

sudo nvidia-xconfig

now this should edit your xorg.conf for your card.

sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart

if the first line errors, its most likely that you have enable repositories enabled, so just follow the how to for older distros.

edgy or older;
edit xorg.conf

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

and change scroll through the text find the video card properties, change "nv" to "vesa". then;

sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart

At this point you should see your graphical login screen, login, and then at this point, system>administration>synaptic package manager, it should ask for you password, then settings repositories, and in under the left most tab is a bunch of check boxes (universe, multiverse, restricted, source code etc) check them all, hit close hit the reload button, at this point if you are using feisty, in synaptic search for nvidia-glx and install. After its done installing open terminal applications>accessories>terminal and run the command;

sudo nvidia-xconfig

at this point you can restart your computer, or 'sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart' in terminal and you should have the nvidia driver working, (you should see the nvidia logo before the login screen).

If you are using edgy or older, at this point there are several options, and none of them are 'pretty' if you wanna use the latest and greatest driver, you can dl and install the nvidia package, find a repo that packages the nvidia driver into a nvidia-glx package, and the appropriate LRM's. The best option is to use envy, the only problem is that if the kernel is updated, X will break, but can be fixed by running envy again. Now envy, is good because, if you use the nvidia installer(via nvidia website), unless you wanna do extra work you cannot use the linux-restricted-modules. 3rd party repositories are great, but I have found that it can take a long time for them to update the LRM package for the latest kernel. So if you update your kernel, and LRM with from the official driver before waiting for the 3rd party repo to update its LRM for th driver you are using from them you are going to get a driver and kernel module api mismatch. Granted Kernel updates do not occur often.

So grab envy from HERE and the CHANGELOG either double click on the .deb or run from terminal

sudo dpkg -i /PATH_TO_ENVY.DEB/envy_0.8.1-0ubuntu6_all.deb

after its installed run envy from terminal;

sudo envy

Just tell it which driver you need to install, sit back and wait, this will update your xorg.conf if you wish, and restart gdm for you. Just remember if you update the kernel you need to run envy again, so if you update the kernel you will see a blue screen saying x is broken, just login via text mode, and then just sudo envy and follow through again, and you should be good.

Hope that helps.

 

[As I Lay Dying]

I had no problems when I was using my 7800 but now I can't get anything to load to the desktop. Ill try a live disk or do an alternate install and each time it takes me to the command prompt.

So I say ok I set xserver to use generic drivers so I can install the new ones. That kindof works but then I cant get any of them to finish loading the desktop. I still kind of a Linux noob and I have no Idea how I would install drivers threw the command prompt.

just follow my howto; and yeah its kinda crappy that nvidia drivers and ati drivers are not updated but I can see why this would require the devs to update the nvidia-glx, the ati-frglx and the linux-restricted-modules everytime ati or nvidia update their drivers, and each driver can introduce new bugs.....

 

[DeChache]

just follow my howto; and yeah its kinda crappy that nvidia drivers and ati drivers are not updated but I can see why this would require the devs to update the nvidia-glx, the ati-frglx and the linux-restricted-modules everytime ati or nvidia update their drivers, and each driver can introduce new bugs.....

Thanks Ill give it a go this weekend. I have feisty fawn downloaded.