Suse11.1 - Installing Video Driver
 

I've got a question that I'm sure you Linux experts will answer with no effort at all, but for someone such as myself it's driving me crazy.

I built a Suse11.1 system (KDE4.1) recently, with an old nVidia Geforce 2 GTS card in it (I think...something very close to that if I'm wrong). Anyway, the KDE interface works, but the response time is annoyingly slow due to the generic video driver being used and I'd like to load the appropriate driver to speed things up.

I went to the nVidia website, eventually finding my way to this page where I was able to download a .RUN file containing the new driver. Sweet. However, nVidia recommended that before I install the driver I check out this page first. Okay, fine.

The how-to page tells me to add DOWNLOAD.NVIDIA.COM into my repositories list. Done. Then it tells me that I should go to YAST > SOFTWARE > SOFTWARE MANAGEMENT to install the driver, at which point the appropriate nVidia package will be autoselected (if the card is supported).

Now yes, I realize that I'm supposed to be doing this outside the GUI, but I wanted to check YAST from within the GUI first, because the last thing I want to do is turn it off, find out that there's no driver, and then lose the GUI completely (again, probably easy to turn back on, but I have no idea how).

Here's the weird part: when I fire up Software Management, despite what the documentation says, there are no nVidia drivers selected automatically. This may be because my card isn't supported, but I think they're leaving something out. The reason I think that is that it makes no sense to me that Software Management would randomly choose to pull up a video driver versus any other driver, software update, software app, etc, just by launching it. In the past I always had to search for what I wanted to install. Nvidia's documentation suggests Software Update will magically know that I want a video driver and will autoselect it. I don't think so. So what am I missing?

Oh, one last question: if I return to the first nVidia page, there's the .RUN driver file present. Am I supposed to download it? If so, why bother with Software Management, since (as I understand it) it's used to install software from repositories and not from a local hard drive. And if I DO have to use Software Management to install local software apps, then how do I direct it to the location of my downloaded driver?

Thanks in advance for any help you can give. As you can tell, I'm pretty green with Linux, and even simple things like driver loads have got me stumped.

Thanks,
Bob

How did you add it to repositories this way download.nvidia.com/opensuse/11.1/ or different ?
If you use the package manager or Zypper they also take care of the dependencies
And if you use Yast if there is a kernel update you do not have to worry about it
Yast is not only a package manager it is more Yast means Yet A Other System Tool
You can tell Yast to use a file on a hard drive , but one that yast can work witch

I added the nVidia repository the way nVidia recommended it (going into YAST, getting into the repositories window (forget it's name offhand...either Software Management or Software Update), clicking ADD, then entering all the relevent nVidia repository information including the address.

How do I tell YAST to use a file on the hard drive for an install as opposed to going out to the repositories?

Thanks,
Bob

Adding the nvidia repositories Yast>Software>Software Repositories
Should do the trick , if not it is not supported

To tell Yast to use a file Yast>Software>Software Management>File>Import