Getting drivers installed for nvidea 6800 GT, i can't see anything!
 

Hello everyone, i'm a n00b to linux and I just got SuSE 10.0 Installed, sound works good, but my graphics card is screwed up. SuSE found my graphics card, it see's the model, and type, etc...but when SuSE started up, everyhtin gwas soo screwed up i couldn't even hardly see where i could log off, meaning i don't nkow how i'm suppose drivers for it! any recommendations on where i can get drivers for:
nVidea GeForce 6800 GT 256 DDR, w/ PCI-eXpress
also how would you install, perhaps i have to go to command line? and if i knew/how to find the config file i'd be glad to show you if it would help! thank you!

I got the most recent kernal updates as well!

Don't use Suse but hope this helps

http://www.suse.de/~sndirsch/nvidia-...ler-HOWTO.html
http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux_d..._1.0-6106.html

Thanks alot accessrichard, but i have no idea what they are talking about with like going into level 3 boot mode and unloading the kernal, can i really screw stuff up? Thanks again!

In Linux there is different runlevels that you can set it to. Each runlevel have different runs certain services and lets either one user usually root or several users to log in. Normally runlevel 3 is multi-user that has console log in, but GUI is not started. By using telinit or init as root, sudo, or su you can change what runlevel you are running in.

nVidia recommends unloading the nvidia module (driver) before running the installer, but actually you can still have the nvidia module loaded only if you pass an option to the installer to ignore detecting the nvidia module running. You just need to unload the nvidia module before using the latest nvidia module.

I do agree with accessrichard that SUSE should not be used. Other distributions will be a lot easier than installing the nVidia modules in SUSE. SUSE uses software that no other distributor uses, so it is a lot harder for us to help you because the utilites that SUSE made for themselves are closed. From the SUSE howto, patching the nVidia modules makes it even harder for us to figure out your problems. Though, it can be installed in SUSE, but it is not going to be easy and it is not going to take 5 minutes.

Electro, I actually uinstalled Fedora Core 4 because it was also giving me problems with my graphics card, should I reinstall, fedora core 4, and then will it be easier to install the nVidia driver? The reason I uninstalled fedora core was because my soundcard wasn't working at all even though it detected it was a SoundBlaster Audigy and the screen was also odd looking, colors were off, but wasn't as bad as SuSE. But now i'm thinking I should have left it installed.

happened to me as well with my 6800GS gfx card with resolution at 24 bits
I dont think u can do anything now so better reinstall suse and this time lower ur resolution to 16 bits-worked for me and it is amazingly good looking and make sure to configure ur monitor properly.

this worked for me but unfortunately i cant see my mouse cursor-even tho my mouse works.

What I read about Fedora 4 that it uses gcc version 4. You will have to downgrade to version 3.5 or 3.4. The kernel and its modules have to be compiled with the same gcc version for a stable setup. The nvidia module is not tested for the gcc version 4.

You can try Gentoo, if you do not mind taking about a day to a week with some systems to get everything installed like GUI. The hard part for a novice installing Gentoo is setting up the partitions and compiling the kernel. Gentoo is worth the hard work in the beginning.

Electro, with school and g/f I have very little time to just sit down and try to get it work but i'm sure it is worth it. But i think it will have to wait for a later date for me to try to install Gentoo, any other recommendations, i see you have mandrake (now manderva or whatever), and slackware, any recommendatinos on any of them w/ compatability with nVidia GeForce 6800 GT? Thanks again!

Mandrake 9.0 is better than its latest version Mandriva 10. You are going to have trouble upgrading the libraries and upgrading to 2.6.x kernels in Mandrake 9.0. I can not recommend Fedora because it uses gcc 4.0. Also I would not recommend Debian based distributions because like SUSE they use their own utilities and they have special steps to compile programs and the kernel.

I can write up a documentation that walks you through step by step to install Gentoo that is more thorough than Gentoo's installation documentation. Then I can send it through email.

Awesome thanks Electro that would be great if you could. I'm currently majoring in Computer Engineering and all my Jr. Level/Sr. Level classes are going to be using Linux heavily so I plan on being a long term user and getting a nice distro like Gentoo would be great! Thanks again! my e-mail is:
css204@psu.edu
PS:
My computer specs are the following:
Intel 3.4 w/ HT
1 gig DDR 533 Dual Channel
160 gig sata for windoze
200 gig sata for Linux
Sound Blaster Audigy
nVidia GeForce 6800 GT w/ PCI-Express

Any known big issues with Gentoo and anything I have on my computer? Also, any idea why there isn't a Gentoo topic under the distro's forum? Thanks!