Is there any way to compile the latest nVidia driver into the kernel itself using a kernel patch of some sort? (Like the source that is included in the installer would be compiled into the kernel and the binary module that is included in the installer would be linked in.)

-Brandon

I am like 99.9% certain not. You might be able to link it though.

Hmm... Would that prevent me from having to "modprobe nvidia" at startup? Would it become a part of the kernel rather than a module that would have to be manually loaded with modprobe?) Is there a way to do that? If so, how would I go about it?

modprobe nvidia
cp -a /dev/nvidia* /etc/udev/devices/

That should do it....if you need help:

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=40622

Awesome! That did it! I've been looking for a way to do that for a while so I could boot with the nice graphic startup and nobody had any idea what I was talking about.

Dude, you rock - I've been looking for a solution to the manual modprobing and the nvidia driver for months!!! Awsome!

Perhaps it wuld have been easier to
echo "nvidia" >> /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6


I thought you guys meant build it straight into the kernel.

That was what I originally wanted. I had been settling for these other solutions for a while and figured that while I was building a new kernel anyway that I would go ahead and see if I could build it into the kernel itself. Although, it looks like that isn't possible so I guess what I had been doing will have to work.

What is it exactly that you were trying to acheive with building nvidia straight into the kernel?

Well, I coud be way off base but I was under the impression that if I could build it into the kernel itself, it would fix the problem with the nVidia driver not being loaded early enough for the graphic boot to work (no need to modprobe a module if it is actually build into the kernel.)

I suppose there could also be a minor performance gain from both from processor-specific optimizations and illiminating the overhead of being run as a module... but since the nVidia driver uses a pre-build binary and the module is just an interface for it, I suppose that wouldn't really apply.

You can graphically boot using a framebuffer device and an initial ramdisk. My computer boots from grub with a nice pretty splash screen. You just need to compile the correct options into your kernel and look into your distributions specific tools for making initial ramdisks. Also, the nvidia kernel module is custom compiled, I don't see why you couldn't export CFLAGS to it.