I have an Nvidia GeForce 8500 graphics card. I want a distro that will, during the installation, recognize my Nvidia card, load/download the correct Nvidia drivers, configure said drivers, and be able to select a resolution higher than 1078x768.

Here is what I DON'T WANT:
-To manually find and edit any config files
-To download and manually complie 1 of 17 possible kernels which may have worked last month, but have since been removed from every repository
-To have to add a bunch of repositories
-To be fored to try to figure out how to correct my config files from a terminal screen because I bricked the gui

I have been searching the internet for weeks now, and it would seem like this is somewhat of an impossible quest to get a straight answer from anyone knowledgable with Linux. I don't want you to try to figure out why my specific problem is happening, I just want a straight answer on this. Are there any distros that actually work with Nvidia out of the box?

Any modern distro shouldn't have a problem at all with a card from the Geforce 8XXX series, they should work out of the box.
If you want something really simple go for Mint or Ubuntu, install them and use the Additional Drivers program to activate the proprietary drivers.

1 members found this post helpful.

Please do not reply if you A) Don't understand the question or B) Don't know what you're talking about. Yesterday I installed Linux Mint Debian Edition - no Nvidia drivers. Just now I installed Ubuntu 12.10 - no Nvidia drivers. No sign of these "Additional Drivers".

I've tried Manjaro, Pear, #!, Mandriva, Fusion, LMDE, and Ubuntu. So if you're answer is just "Any modern distro shouldn't have a problem at all...", you obviously don't understand or you just want to post so you get forum points.

Geez ... don't be so hard on someone who's tring to help you!

I've never had an Nvidia 8500 specifically, but I've installed the Nvidia drivers on any number of Linux systems (mostly Ubuntu). On Ubuntu at least, it's usually as simple as:

Then reboot the system and the Nvidia driver should be installed and working. I believe that the latest drivers still support the GeForce 8XXX series of cards, so this should work (otherwise, Ubuntu has packages for older drivers). If it does not work, please tell us exactly the error message that you get or the improper behavior that you see. I realize it can be very frustrating, but most problems are easily fixable if you provide sufficient details to help us help you.

2 members found this post helpful.

I clearly understand your question. You want an easy to configure distribution (beware of ancient tools like text editors) that make it very easy to install the proprietary Nvidia drivers. You want to have that done automatically, but I am not aware of any distribution that does this, so I recommended the ones that come very close to that.

You can be sure that I know what I am talking about. I am not since yesterday into hardware and Linux and used Ubuntu for quite some time.

I recommended to install Mint, not Mint Debian Edition. Those are not the same. The Additional Drivers program (real name jockey) is not ported yet to Debian, which (obviously) is the base for the Debian Edition, in opposition to the main Mint edition, which is based on Ubuntu.

I didn't state that they are installed by default, I stated that the Geforce 8XXX cards are supported by default and that you have to install the proprietary drivers manually. You realize that there are different drivers for those cards, the free (installed by default) nouveau drivers and the proprietary drivers (not installed by default)? I also stated that the easiest way to install the drivers is using the Additional Drivers program.

I am in fact guilty of not checking in any version of Ubuntu if the Additional Drivers program is at the exact same place as before. Maybe just because I am not a Ubuntu user anymore. In 12.10 the Additional Drivers program was for some reason integrated into the Software Sources program: http://www.techdrivein.com/2012/10/a...-moved-to.html
This info was by the way one of the first hits when searching for Ubuntu 12.10 additional drivers

You realize that I am a moderator here and that it is not necessary for me at all to gather "forum points"?
Anyways, if you want to get help from the knowledgeable members here that spend their free time voluntarily just to help other people with their Linux problems you should consider to be a bit more friendly to those people when they try to help you.

3 members found this post helpful.

I'm just sick of Linux Gurus "Let 'em eat cake!" attitude with people who are trying to get into Linux. It's not like Nvidia is some no-name graphics card company that only 1 in 1000 people have. It's things like this that are keeping Linux from ever being anything more than just a hobby. Argh.

OK, well let's get this over with, the 15 pages of "simple" instructions that I'll have to do to "trick" Linux into actually working with my hardware...

I installed LMDE. Then ran:

sudo apt-get install nvidia-glx nvidia-kernel-dkms nvidia-xconfig nvidia-settings

Per instructions. Then:

sudo nvidia-settings

When I reset my machine, it appeared that the Nvidia drivers were working, but my maximum resolution was 640x480.

Not true.

Use synaptec: Menu -> System -> Synaptec (you must be online the internet)
-> Search String "nvidia" -> click -> and click -> and click .....
(for clicking is the only wisdom given by microsoft to their paying client). That's it. Done.

Reboot.

Excuse us:
A helper like TobiSGD certainly knows and understands your problem. It is rather your poor learning attitude (or laziness) that made you overlook the very simple solutions right under your nose.


Poor taste; poor analytical preparation; mediocre mind. Go to nvidia site find out for which distro they are writing their ugly modules and you will return to get the top five distros at www.distrowatch.com --just for a common sense if you are not truly resourceful.

Most of us spend time here for both: learning and sharing (helping others), not for points for the points given here are not convertible to cash .

We help fellowmen for free; because we receive Gnu/Linux for free: "Freely ye received; freely give."

Your bad habit at barking others (or barking at company blockheads) when something in your box doesn't work the way you like is a remnant habit from the microsoft world: Go back to redmond and bark hard those people, they deserve it. But here you are out of place for we owe nothing from you, not a cent, you have no right to bark at anyone when you overlooked a simple solution inside your box.

Gnu/linux is for the intelligent and hard working.

Microsoft made profit from the dullards and lazy.

Choose.

1 members found this post helpful.

Forget the stories about 'linux works out-of-the-box". If you're lucky, it indeed does. If you're not so lucky, it does not and you can go through a frustrating time to get it going with lots of trial-and-error. Are you up for that? From your opening post, no offense intended, I would say that you're not.

I've had plenty of frustration with nvidia cards (6200 and 8400) and the 'out-of-the-box' experience with Ubuntu 10.04. Even the proprietary drivers in the repositories did not work so I had to resort to the proprietary drivers from the nvidia website; which implies re-installing the driver after each kernel-update.

Why do you want to install the proprietary nvidia driver? Something wrong with the standard open-source nouveau driver that is used by default?

Your limited resolution is probably caused by the fact that, for some reason, your monitor is not recognized. You have to solve the root cause of the problem or live with it and manually setup resolutions. I'm nowadays at a loss how to do that and it will, for me, be an exercise of research as well as trial-and-error.

I've been using linux as a desktop for 12 years and have had Nvidia cards on all of them and have had no problems. I have had to download the binary and install it maually when using slackware, but i's no different to having windows and having to install the drivers for it to function properly. Now i'm using Ubuntu/xubuntu/lubuntu and no problem there either.

PCLinuxOS has the Nvidia drivers included on the install DVD.
→ No configuring. It's all done automatically.

Current is PCLinuxOS-2012.08 ( 1.3 GB DVD )
http://distrowatch.com/index.php?dis...h=all&year=all

( Or the "special" version 2012.09 "KDE FullMonty" 4GB DVD )

4 members found this post helpful.

Nowadays it is as complicated as starting up the nvidia-settings program and select the resolution you want from a drop down list.Thanks for the info, didn't know that.

Thank you knudfl.

The rest of you need to settle down. Installing drivers in Windows vs Linux is NO WHERE NEAR THE SAME THING! I've never had to recompile kernels and manually edit Windows config files (after searching the internet for hours to find out exactly WHAT to edit).

Look, I like Linux and I appreciate that forums like this exist, but a majority of you who post either don't answer the questions or smugly say "all that needs to be done is X" where X is editing/doing something that a Linux noob has no idea about.

Look, I'm sorry I wasn't using Linux back in the '80s and haven't already learned how to manually do any and everything. That's why I'm even posting in the first place. Some of you guys are no better than Mac fanboys.

It's obviously not THAT easy, else OP would not have ended with 640x480 max resolution.

Since Nvidia driver is propietary, it makes things difficult for distro developers. I believe all of us wish to have it all ready-to-use with a fresh install, but maybe in this forum you'll find other users that faced the same problem and know a fix.

Anyway, about your issue, i had Nvidia GeForce in a workstation a long time ago, Mandriva detected it with no problems (it even displayed nvidia logo), Ubuntu after 10.x worked just going to propietary devices and activating it. Debian worked just downloading the .run package from Nvidia Homepage.

I believe newer distros of Mandriva/Ubuntu/Debian have this problem solved or at least a well documented fix, so if you still can't get it to work it could be a specifically GeForce 8500 issue.