NVIDIA driver not working on Acer laptop with Slackware 14.0 64-bit
 

I have just installed Slackware 14.0 64-bit on a new Acer Aspire V3-571G, with Geforce GT 640M graphics. I have installed the NVIDIA proprietary driver, but when attempting to load it the X server will not start. Yes, I blacklisted the nouveau driver and rebooted before trying to run it with the NVIDIA driver. The error message just says 'no screens found', and then it quits. I have checked that for sure the nouveau module was not loaded. Oddly, the Nvidia installation script did not detect the nouveau driver, so I had to do the blacklisting manually after I found out about the conflict. But it still didn't help.

I had to un-blacklist nouveau and change xorg.conf to use it again. It seems to work well enough, but I want to use the proprietary one, if possible. Can anyone help?

Is this a hybrid or optimus

Willy,

I have seen no mention of Optimus anywhere on this machine. How would I know for sure? Sorry but I don't know what you mean by hybrid.

Thanks for the useful and interesting blog, by the way!

Open a terminal window, run the command /sbin/lspci and look for the presence of two video cards. Optumis usually has a Intel card, and an Nvidia card. If you have two, you will need to install Bumblebee in order to get the Nvidia card going.

Here is the output of lspci. I don't see any Nvidia card at all, but it isn't PCI, is it? I do see an Intel graphics controller. So perhaps it is Optimus, since I know there is an Nvidia card. I am confused....

$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Ivy Bridge DRAM Controller (rev 09)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Ivy Bridge PCI Express Root Port (rev 09)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Ivy Bridge Graphics Controller (rev 09)
00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point USB xHCI Host Controller (rev 04)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point MEI Controller #1 (rev 04)
00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point USB Enhanced Host Controller #2 (rev 04)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Panther Point High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Panther Point PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev c4)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Panther Point PCI Express Root Port 2 (rev c4)
00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point USB Enhanced Host Controller #1 (rev 04)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Panther Point LPC Controller (rev 04)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point 6 port SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 04)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation Panther Point SMBus Controller (rev 04)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation Device 0fd2 (rev a1)
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetLink BCM57785 Gigabit Ethernet PCIe (rev 10)
02:00.1 SD Host controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM57765 Memory Card Reader (rev 10)
02:00.2 System peripheral: Broadcom Corporation Device 16be (rev 10)
02:00.3 System peripheral: Broadcom Corporation Device 16bf (rev 10)
03:00.0 Network controller: Atheros Communications Inc. Device 0034 (rev 01)

You have Optimus. You need Bumblebee installed to use the Nvidia card.

Here is a link to the Bumblebee project. -->http://bumblebee-project.org/

I don't have one of these systems, however, search the slackware area. I know I have read threads of slackers getting it to work.

OK, thanks very much for the information. There are labels stuck all over this machine. I just found one that actually says Nvidia Optimus, so you are certainly right. Just reading the instructions to build and install Bumblebee and all of its dependencies gave me a headache. The display is working now with the nouveau driver, and seems fine, so perhaps at least for now I will forget about the proprietary driver. I must admit I had never heard of Optimus before, and if I had known about it I would have avoided buying any laptop which uses it, as I prefer to keep things simple!