Debian: drivers
 

Hello everyone. I need a little help here.

I have an HP Pavilion dv6645eo with Debian 5.0 on. It runs as it should, except for certain drivers.

I don't have the Nvidia driver, so graphics are very low, and I alså need Broadcom driver, so therefore I have not wirelessly.

Before I had Ubuntu and there was something with "Hardware Drivers", where I just had to put the checkmark and reboot, but in Debian it is obviously more technical.

Some will help me installing Nvidia driver version 173 and the Broadcom driver?

For nvidia:
http://desiato.tinyplanet.ca/~lsoren...dri-howto.html

For broadcom

The Nvidia driver should be accessable in the Debian repositories through synaptic. Installing it will pull in the kernel headers and a few other packages. As for the Broadcom wireless, I am not sure how to set that up. If there is no Linux driver, you may have to set up a wrapper like ndiswrapper and run a Windows driver in Linux. Others may be able to help you with that.

Ubuntu IS Debian, but Debian unstable with Ubuntu specific changes so you should be able to get things working. The difference, as you may have found out already, is that Ubuntu holds your hand through everything and Debian does not, but it's a great way to learn.

I can post back with the specific packages I installed for the Nvidia drivers this evening when I get home.

I came to step 3. I have a Nvidia Geforce 7150M, which driver should I choose?

I would just use the latest drivers from nvidia.. it's not much different than the Debian way, but the drivers are more up to date..

CTRL + ALT + F2 to get to a prompt and login as root, then do the following commands


/etc/init.d/gdm stop
cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.orig
aptitude update
aptitude install build-essential module-assistant
m-a update
m-a prepare
wget http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/180.29/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-180.29-pkg1.run
chmod +x NVIDIA-Linux-x86-180.29-pkg1.run
./NVIDIA-Linux-x86-180.29-pkg1.run
/etc/init.d/gdm start

step through the setup accepting the defaults, allow the nvidia configuration utility to modify your xorg.conf file at the end when prompted.

the final command should put you back at a graphical login prompt with the nvidia drivers running..


You may want to download the nvidia driver ahead of time to make things easier.. less to type.

Can I just install some Nvidia packages in Synaptic?

The second option looks to be unnecessary and burdensome out.
Dansk

Use http://www.smxi.org to install the Nvidia driver.

Broadcom, b43/ b43legacy wlan:
apt-get install b43-fwcutter

OpenFWWF 5.1 opensource firmware for the following Broadcom AirForce 802.11b/g wireless cards:
apt-get install openfwwf

* BCM4306
* BCM4311 revision 1
* BCM4318
* BCM4320
Open firmware for Broadcom BCM43xx (b43) wlan devices
This package contains the open source firmware alternative for Broadcom
AirForce BCM43xx wireless lan chipsets, which can be used in combination
with the in-kernel b43 module of kernel 2.6.30 or above. .
Known supported boards:
* BCM4306
* BCM4311/1
* BCM4318
* BCM4320
Homepage: http://www.ing.unibs.it/openfwwf/

Yes - although the steps outlined above work fine, the fact the drivers and all needed packages are in the repositories makes this process seem a bit cumbersome in comparison. You will still need to know your kernel version though because the Nvidia drivers are built for the kernel packages in the repositories. You can find out your kernel version by running

the m-a update , m-a prepare steps will automatically handle downloading and installing the necessary kernel headers for compiling the drivers.. just fyi..

Farslayer:

I am not so much to install some programs that do something else. I would rather do it manually, as I can make it necessary and not superfluous.


Sargek:

Which packages must be installed to get Nvidia version 173? - I run with kernel 2.6.26-1-686, is that kernel compatible for Nvidia drivers?

YES! So I got Nvidia drivers up and running, and the Wireless.

Used wizard http://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers

Repo: Thanks for you help with the Wireless. :)
Sargek: Thanks for your help. it was you who put me on the trail of the wizard. : D

Wow you really think the directions in my first post are not a manual method ? amazing :)

Glad you got it working!

farslayer - that last one was funny! I was a a bit taken aback the first time I ran the install that way too because it is much more involved than even doing it on Gentoo, but it's all good.

farslayer,

Could you tell me the purpose of "m-a update" and "m-a prepare" within this script? They don't seem to do anything since it's a foreign package. At least I've never run them when installing an NVIDIA driver from nvidia.com. All I do is run the .run file.

I'm just using module assistant to go grab and install the current kernel header packages needed to compile the module. the commands are short and quick to type and everything is handled automatically. (by automatic I just mean that I don't have to remember $(uname -r) or go manually lookup my current kernel with uname)

the alternate method (what most people do) is to use aptitude to install the specific kernel header package for your running kernel. something like:

aptitude install linux-headers-$(uname -r)
43 keystrokes


m-a update
m-a prepare
23 keystrokes


The module assistant method accomplishes the same goal of getting the proper header installed with less keystrokes.

So just call me a lazy typist why dont ya :)