I have a Geforce 4 MX, and I can't run games worth a crap. While it's not the best card in the world, it should certainly be able to run Quake 3 and Tux Racer. I noticed the option to enable 3D hardware acceleration is greyed out when I look at my video settings in the system options menu. Any clue as to why that would be like that? Thanks for the help!

Norrin

you need to see if you have the driver installed correctly and if you have enabled the opengl and direct3d support i would guess. to tell you the truth it is probably the best guess i can give because i am a noob and i cant get my driver installed either. i have a ti4200 and i need lots of help cause i am a n()()b to linux...

nvidia has special drivers for linux, so does ati but not as good i have heard. you are lucky most other cards would have no hope.

also on another note, I have a hard core gamer friend that hates linux, and he said he noticed that the games that run in linux run faster, we have almost identical configs and he definetly knows hwo to configure his games. this is of cource with nvidia driver.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux.html
get the ia32 driver and install it properly. There are a lot of threads about this problem on this board.

oh and just to note, as many get tripped up about the same thing you mentioned, is the fact that if the drivers are installed properly then you do have 3d acceleration...plain and simple...on some distros that box gets grayed out and nvidia is well aware of it, but you will see that they noted themselves, that yes this happens in some distros but not to worry you do in fact have 3d acceleration and its not to be worried about...

so to cap all that off, you do have it

as far as I know Geforce 4 vid cards are supported in Linux

All you need to do is download the latest driver:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux_d..._ia32_1.0-4496

if you have RH 9.0 setup in graphical bootup mode (which means it automatically boots up to x windows and asks for username/password and such), then you will have to be in init 3 (at least x windows has to be killed) before you install the driver:


HOW TO INSTALL THE DRIVER:
while in x windows (GNOME or KDE or any other windows manager)
press CTRL + ALT + F2
enter root as username
enter password for root
then type init 3
it will take a while but it should bring you back to a prompt after it has killed several processes
then type killall -KILL X
to make sure that x windows is not running it should say something like: No X Process is running to be killed

after that just simply go into the directory where you downloaded the drivers to

then just simply run it with the command

./NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-4496-pkg2.run

(remember to use the TAB key so that the shell can complete the filename for you - just start off with ./NVIDIA and then press TAB) - if there are no other files with the name of NVIDIA in the same directory it should be able to complete this line for you

ACCEPT when prompted

it will install everything

then go with OK when done

you should get a prompt back up

then you will have to change a file in order to use the newly installed driver

just simply do

pico /etc/X11/XF86Config

it should open up some kind of file with a lot of text in it

move your cursor down more to the end part and you should see a section that might look like the following:

Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "nv"
VendorName "Videocard vendor"
BoardName "NVIDIA GeForce 4 MX (generic)"
VideoRam 32768 - you might have more here

just simply change the line

Driver "nv"
to
Driver "nvidia"

then press CTRL - X

it will ask you if you want to save it and press y (for yes)
then press ENTER to save it to the same file

then you should be back to the prompt

YOU'RE ALL SET!

if you just wanna test it, type reboot

and it'll reboot your system back with init 5 (the graphical mode)

it should even bring up a splash screen of NVIDIA shortly before it shows you the user login screen in XDM

hope this helps!

a vital note, if you use nvidia i recommend using text logon. if you recompile your kernel it deletes the nvidia driver (actually only if yoy do a make modules_install) but then x won't start, some distros do not handle that well. if you recompile your kernel and it is a different version you will need to restart then install nvidia drivers again with the .run file.

thanks for the info exodist! I didn't know that hehe

another another note:
you can add a short 3 or 4 lines to your rc.local fiel telling it to check and see if the module file exists and if it doesn't run the nvidia installer automatically before starting X, I could write it for you except that i would have to bruch up on a few commands anyone who immediately knows them convert this properly:
#/bash/sh
echo "Checking on NVIDIA driver status"
if [ ?-not-exist? /lib/modules/$?kernelversiondirectory?/kernel/drivers/video/nvidia.o ]; then
/path/to/nvidia-whatever.run
else
echo "NVIDIA driver is installed"
done
#any other rc.local stuff.


another (last) note: I would also be interested in this script. and also (not called a note) the .run can have a flag combo to automatically go without prompting or opening menus for automated install.

That's a very cool idea, exodist.

The only thing is that that script is only needed after a recompile or from some other way the modules get hosed.

And when I recompile my kernel, I always make sure to recompile my ATI video driver as well with the new one.

I'd also like to say that my ATI Radeon 9000 Pro card works extremely well under linux -- much better framerates than i ever got with games in windows, amazingly enough.

It took some fiddling but the FireGL drivers are what work best, from www.schneider-digital.de

I lie this card a lot... Not state of the art by any means, but very feature rich and fast.. enough for me

-Shade

I read somewhere that the '3D hardware acceleration' is grayed out but it is running if the following works. If you want to know if your driver is installed correctly, look for the screen with NVIDIA and a graphic when 'x' starts. Mine has a white background. If you see that and 'x' loads, it's working. If you don't see that, then it's not loading the driver. Check your XF86Config(-4) file and make sure you have it set to load then check if it's installed properly.
If you need help, post. I'm new and I survived it. It's not bad when you get it done. Just a bit unnerving for a newbie.
Also note that you need to install when booted as init 3. Failsafe did not work either. I also could not kill 'x' and get it to install properly. I have a how to for this in the answers section. It's for Mandrake but it may work for you too.

Hope this helps.

Just an add-on and a question I have that maybe someone can clear up

If you get the nvidia drivers running for your card and agpgart doesn't detect it automatically (i know this can be fixed with try_agp_unsupported=1) I take it it means your card is actually running in PCI Mode or whatever it is? Anyone know ? Or am I confusing myself

Sorry about the lack of responses guys, I certainly appreciate all your help.

I realized how unneccesary this thread was last night shortly after I posted it. I went to the Nvidia website and saw the driver. I followed the instructions (which were exactly what retiredsoldier said, thanks!) and it seems to be working now.

Before I'm pretty sure the hardware acceleration actually was turned off because I was getting abysmal frame rates in games that I used to be able to run at top settings in Windows. After I installed the driver, I tested out a few of the games, and they're running beautifully now.

All I had to do was fight for my life in EMACS trying to figure out HOW THE BLOODY HELL TO WORK THE PROGRAM. I finally managed to escape out of it (out of pure luck) and edited my XFREE86 config file in vi.

I'm slowly but surely finding my way around Linux. Every day I learn something new. I've already almost got my linux system running exactly as I had my Windows system. I'm missing a few things (file sharing, chiefly), but I'm getting there. I tried to install gnutella last night, but it won't run for some reason.

emacs... when I use a atext editor I want a real text editor NOT a whole friggan os inside a program... vi is good.