Just bought an MSI GeForce GTX 1650 Gaming X 4G video card.
Tried installing the driver from a .run file off the proprietor website, but "gedit has not been able to detect the character encoding".

Hello, Bolshevik & welcome to LQ.

I don't see why gedit is running

Have you set your locale? What does 'echo $LANG' show?

Hi, business_kid. Sorry for the late reply.
I don't know that I ever did but it seems to be correct:
$LANG = en_AU.UTF-8

Not sure about Gedit but when I try to run the driver file from the manufacturer website I get an error:
Could not open the file /home/josh/Downloads/NVI…A-Linux-x86_64-440.44.run using the Unicode (UTF-8) character encoding. Please check that you are not trying to open a binary file.
Select a different character encoding from the menu and try again.

?????????
Are you trying to open the file with gedit ?

if so DO NOT do that


you run that program in the terminal

then fallow the on screen instructions
you MUST!!!! have installed the kernel source and headers FIRST

2 members found this post helpful.

So, this is an NVIDIA clone, yes?
Depending on the distro you use, you would be better off installing the appropriate nvidia driver through your distro's repositories.
Some even have a gui "additional drivers" for that.

1 members found this post helpful.

John VV, I was just opening the run file from the downloads tab.
Also, I don't have a root password, and not sure where to install the kernel source or header from. Best explain like I'm some sort of gibbon who learned programming from watching NCIS.

ondoho, it is NVIDIA. My distro is Linux Mint 17 Cinnamon 64-bit. By "repositories" do you mean the Software Manager/Synaptic Package Manager?

Mint has a settings dialog that will auto detect your Nvidia card and install everything needed. I am not a Mint user so can't say where the dialog is but I believe it is "additional drivers" - if there is a search function on the desktop, you might try that.

IIRC, they specifically ask you if you want to install 3rd party drivers during setup, based I suppose on the illusion that there's one purist out there who has spent £$€hundreds an a nvidia card and doesn't want to pollute his system with non open-source drivers.

Mind you, if there is one, he has probably deleted the kernel firmware as well, because those aren't open source.

sevendogsbsd, yeah it's called Driver Manager but it contained no drivers and had no menu to muck around with. I just found this and by following the PPA instructions gave me the latest proprietary driver as well as a generic:
https://www.reallinuxuser.com/how-to...in-linux-mint/

business kid, didn't ask me that actually. As for that one Linux user who's anti-open-source we probably shouldn't mock the feeble-minded, it's not their fault they're dumb.

It's all very schmick now, just need to get a Display Port to HDMI cable so I can plug into the TV as a dual monitor. Thanks everybody for your help.

If driver manager isn't showing the driver you should be able to install the driver from the repositories using synaptic, or whatever.

This worked:

sudo add-apt-repository ppaibaf/graphics-drivers

You should not need to do that. I have no idea how good the PPA you added is but Mint itself should offer a driver for your card. Using PPAs, while handy, can lead to strange behaviour when trying to up update your system or install other packages.