I'm fairly new to Linux and have been installing Slackware 10.2. Each time I installs it defaults to a 'Vesa' driver. I have had many attempts (and fresh Slackware intalls) to install the nVidia drivers provided for download on the nVidia site (NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8174-pgk1.run) without success. Each time when I run 'StartX' I get a few coloured dots on the screen and all is frozen. I have made the necessary modifications to the xorg.conf file and tried many of the suggestions posted on this and other forums without success.

What I would like to try now is to replace the 'Vesa' driver with the 'nv' driver that is apparently included with the distribution.

How can I 'force' the use of the 'nv' driver?. Is it simply a case of modifying xorg.conf?. Can I do it by running 'xorgconfig' and in this case which of the drivers would I select?.

Thank you.

Bill.

When you install X, it should give you a screen saying something like 'choose how much you want to configure' with 'simple', 'medium', and 'advanced' as choices. If you select 'medium', I think you should be able to choose the driver yourself and maybe select other options that you need. I once had a problem where X tried to use too big a screen resolution, and it didn't work. If 'medium' doesn't work, try 'advanced', but for that you will need to know even more about your monitor and graphics card.

Hi,

Thanks for your reply - very interesting.

In the slackware installation, I was never offered any options to configure X at all and I have recently installed it several times.

Is there a command that I can run on my installation to invoke the "install X" commands that you refer to?.

Thank you,

Bill.

Hi

You can either edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf by hand or use some scripts. Try xorgconfig which asks you several questions. Or xorgsetup which is supposed to be more automatic.

I often prefer edititng xorg.conf try startx and look in /var/log/Xorg.0.log

Good luck!