3D desktops with nVidia GeForce4 420 Go

H-Radical · 03-03-2007, 03:14 PM

Hi all,

I recently decided to experiment with one of the 3D desktop programs (I admit I didn't know there was such a thing until I read a thread on this board a few days ago). I did a little reading and it seemed like Beryl is one of the best out there. I have Sony VAIO notebook (PCG GRT100) with a nVidia GeForce4 420 Go with 64MB of graphic memory. I saw this on the Beryl site: "nVidia cards require the non-free drivers to be installed, as the default "nv" driver does not support acceleration." I have driver 1.0-8776, and no matter how hard I looked (on the nVidia site) I found no non-free drivers. I was wondering if anyone knows if this is significant and could cause problems if I proceed with the installation. I need my computer for work and I can't afford to take a risk with something that could cause a problem with a time-consuming solution.

Thanks for your help.
H-Radical

PS: I would be glad to hear your opinion on whether Beryl is a good choice in the first place or not.

alienux · 03-03-2007, 03:19 PM

To see if the current driver you are using has acceleration enabled, open a command shell and type:

Code:

glxinfo | grep direct

And look to see if direct rendering is enabled.

If not, you will need the drivers from the nVidia site, which I think that the FAQ you read meant by non-free driver.

Necronomicom · 03-03-2007, 03:59 PM

I'm running beryl on a Geforce 4 420, it runs ok, also you can download the latest nvidia driver for the geforce 420 at

http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux_d..._1.0-9631.html

However while beryl is very fun and cool its not really that much practical and its a little unstable as well (sometimes it will make X freeze up when I switch between console and X), but you can easily turn it on/off as you like, or remove it without messing up your system, the biggest issue I had installing it was upgrading from X11R6 to X11R7, but maybe you are already running X11R7 and don't need to upgrade it.

H-Radical · 03-03-2007, 06:58 PM

Thanks for the replies;

Code:

~$ glxinfo | grep direct
direct rendering: Yes
~$

So that shouldn't cause a problem.

Code:

~$ X -version

X Window System Version 7.1.1
...

So that seems to be OK too. I'll dive right in, then, and see what happens.

Thanks for your help.
H-Radical

H-Radical · 03-03-2007, 07:32 PM

OK. I did it. and it just went crazy on me on the first run. The screen was divided in four quadrants. The bottom two were black, and the top two showed my background image in negative colors (where blue turns purple, white turns black,etc). When I right-clicked somewhere on the screen, I saw two menus open, but when I took my mouse over the menu, the colors changed as if the real menu was showing up. I tried to create a screenshot of it (as you can tell, it's very hard to describe it in words), but to get the system functioning again, I had to shutdown X and I guess I lost the screenshot. I followed all the instructions on the beryl website like changing xorg.conf, etc. But there must be some setting somewhere that is not properly adjusted. Also, all the fonts were a lot smaller; I could tell that Beryl didn't know where to put everything on my screen, but the functionality didn't change. For example, the gnome menu bar was reduced to a barely legible small line on the top of the screen, but if I clicked on where the menu was usually supposed to be, the menu opened.

I've given as much information as I possibly could in words. If anyone knows what could have gone wrong, I would appreciate the help.

Cheers,
H-Radical

Edit: OK, on a second try, I managed to get a screenshot. But now I don't know how to post it here; I can email a url to the image to whoever wants to see it.

H-Radical · 03-04-2007, 01:10 AM

Alas

Code:

DefaultDepth 24
...
Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "TRUE"

in the Section "Device" of /etc/X11/xorg.conf solved the problem.

Beryl looks great. I can now show it off to my LinuxLess friends. Thanks to all who helped.

H-Radical

lurko · 03-04-2007, 02:13 AM

Quote:

sometimes it will make X freeze up when I switch between console and X

Disabling Sync to VBlank and Detect Refresh Rate on the Main tab under General Options in BSM fixed that problem for me. Now if nvidia could just fix the black window no-more-vid-ram bug.

nevernamed · 06-27-2007, 11:57 AM

I have a question relating to the nVidia drivers.
I recently did I clean install of ubuntu 7.04 on a new computer that I put together. The video card that is installed is an nVidia GeForce 7100 GS. So I downloaded the driver that can be found here: http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux_d...100.14.11.html
however, when I type:

Code:

sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-100.14.11-pkg1.run

I get an error that tells me that the installation cannot continue because an x server is running. Fine, control+alt+f1 and I try it again. Still no avail, same error.
ps -ef | grep x reveals that there are some x components running (x-session-manager). Does anybody know 1) if this is the right driver and 2) how to install it so I can get beryl to work :-D?

Thanks a lot!

H-Radical · 06-28-2007, 04:15 PM

Well I'm not that experienced so I'm not sure how much this'll help, but if you have X running AT ALL (doesn't matter if it's on tty7 or tty1) you have X running. You can try

Code:

$ sudo gdm stop

to stop X and then install the driver. (i think that was how you stopped X?)

nevernamed · 06-30-2007, 09:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by H-Radical

Well I'm not that experienced so I'm not sure how much this'll help, but if you have X running AT ALL (doesn't matter if it's on tty7 or tty1) you have X running. You can try

Code:

$ sudo gdm stop

to stop X and then install the driver. (i think that was how you stopped X?)

Well when I do that gdm and all the nice pretty windows go away, but there is no prompt. Which is bad. So what I ended up doing was booting the recovery mode of the kernel and installing it like that.
Thanks for the help!

Peter_APIIT · 06-30-2007, 10:14 PM

Boot into run level 3 and install the nvidia driver