I have a pretty nice computer at home used mostly for gaming. Specs:
Code:
2 x MSI NX7600GT Diamond Plus GeForce 7600 GT PCI Express 256MB DDR3 Video Card
MB EVGA 122-CK-NF68-A1 N680i SLI
CPU INTEL C2D E6600 2.4G 775 4M (Overclocked to 3.2G)
MEM 1Gx2 CORSAIR TWIN2X2048-6400
HD 500G WD 7K 16M SATA2 WD5000AAKS
I've been an Ubuntu user for years, so when I set the box up I left more than enough disc space to install Linux. I, of course, tried to install Ubuntu - but this board uses the nVidia "fake raid". I read up on how to install dmraid prior to trying to install Ubuntu - and that almost worked. However, Ubuntu install just couldn't handle the SLI video cards. It occurred to me that I was about to partition and format my drives when I couldn't really see what it was about to do. I (wisely) chickened out and aborted the install.
I've read elsewhere on this forum that openSUSE does a great job recognizing these fake raids and install is a breeze.
I'm here to report that this is absolutely true. Installed openSUSE 10.3 x86 64 bit. It recognized the raid, the existing partitions, and suggested a truly brilliant partitioning scheme. Very easy to understand and adjust size parameters and such. Install went very smoothly - until I tried to login. Black screen.
Managed to get to a text only login and copied the xorg.conf.install over top of the newly created xorg.conf. Now I could get into gnome, but it looked like crap. I tried (and I mean I really, really tried) to follow the advice from the openSUSE forums to get the nvidia drivers loaded through yast, but it just kept complaining that dependencies were missing while providing no hint on just what those might be (is apt the only package manager that resolves dependencies?). I installed the headers, the kernel source, gcc - everything I could think of. I gave up and installed the nvidia drivers directly. That works, sort of (I'm using the machine now in openSUSE). Comes up and looks great, but Compiz doesn't work.
Ok, I have an 11 year old P3-500mhz with a PCI GeForce 5200FX running Ubuntu 6.10 and Compiz with all the eye candy turned on. And it works very, very well indeed. I absolutely refuse to believe that my Dual Core Conroe with SLI'd 7600's can't run Compiz but my 10+ year old POS can. I've googled and searched this forum and haven't found anything resembling a definitive answer. Any help would be appreciated.
