I loaded up slackware current on an old Toshiba Satellite laptop. It has a GeForce 420 MX aka 420 go video chipset. Is there any (easy-ish) way to get the old nVidia 96.x driver set to compile with the kernel shipping with Slackware current? Or is it just to old and I might as well stick with the nouvea driver?

ERROR: The kernel header file '/lib/modules/5.4.80-smp/build/include/linux/version.h' does not exist. The most likely reason for this is that the kernel source files in '/lib/modules/5.4.80-smp/build' have not been configured.

I saw this a few years ago when the kernel architecture changed such that these old drivers would no longer compile.

I would go with Nouveau if I were you.

You have no ways to use The Blob in versions 96.43.x with the slackware-current, because it is not compatible with both the kernel and Xorg.

The single alternative is to use Nouveau, as was said already. OR, an older release of Slackware, more appropriate of their venerable age.

As disappointing as it looks, seems the NVidia graphics cards ages very ugly, and when they are out of NVidia support via The Blob, basically they are useless.

I'm not opposed to using an older version of Slackware. I was rather found of Slackware 9x and IIRC it still had KDE 3.x (I very much disliked KDE4+). Maybe I'll just move back to that old version.

Come to think of it, there anything the proprietary driver will do that the Nouveau won't, given that all I do with this is watch videos and just tinker? I'm wondering if there is any benefit to using an older version of Slackware with the proprietary drivers?

It has a Celeron 32 bit single core cpu, 512M memory. Running xfce and watching a video with mplayer uses about 75% of available ram, it doesn't even hit the swap file. It's perfect for something like this.

Well, regarding with the ability to run The Blob 96.43.x, you do not need to go that far in the past - like the Slackware 9.x, however if you are are a KDE3 true fan, probably you will love the stellar release of Slackware 12.2 ...

Still, at a quick look into slackbuilds.org, they have packages for this particular 96.43.23 blob (which is the last one) up to Slackware 14.1 which release is still maintained (with security patches) by Mr. Volkerding and no EOL date is announced yet.

https://slackbuilds.org/result/?sear...gacy96&sv=14.1

In other hand, I doubt that Nouveau has similar performances with The Blob, even for a historical GeForce 4 graphics card. So, most probably you will get better performances with The Blob.

Also, the older releases of Slackware (and any other distro) tends to have lighter hardware requirements, then using one of them, you may have a better usage of your limited resources.

However, an older release may also have an older MPlayer with no support for codecs used today. And this apply to any other package for them.

My suggestion is that IF you have spare space in the hard drive, to install and experiment the wanted release in a separate partition. Literally seeing how they work in your box, you may chose which one is more appropriate to your needs.

tyvm for all that. So if I understand correctly, the 96.x nVidia driver will compile under Slackware 14.1, or more specifically with the kernel that ships with Slackware 14.1?

Yes. More specifically, looks like the 96.x NVidia kernel driver would compile with the kernels shipped by Slackware 14.1 and the user space driver (from the same series) would work with the particular X.org stack from Slackware 14.1.

To work properly, your NVidia driver should be compatible with both the kernel and the X.org stack - isn't only about kernels.

Anyways, you will need those two packages from SBo:

nvidia-legacy96-driver
nvidia-legacy96-kernel

And of course, the Slackware 14.1 installed.

So I have this installed, but how do you configure xorg.conf to use it? In the existing xorg.conf, it has this:

Section "Device"
Identifier "Device0"
Driver "nvidia"
VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation"
EndSection

But if I run glxgears, it gives an error on extension GLX missing. I'm not sure if it's using the proprietary driver or not.

Edit: I got rid of xorg.conf as it didn't seem to doing anything, and that actually fixed a mouse problem. Still not sure it's actually using the proprietary driver...

Did you disable nouveau?
https://docs.slackware.com/howtos:ha..._configuration

I did indeed. So a happy solution seems to be to go back to Slackware 13.37. This version gets along well with this laptop, the native nvidia driver from nvidia installs just fine, and glxgears works. I rather liked that particular version, it was 1337 after all .

HOWEVER -

(EE) NVIDIA(0): Failed to allocate/map the primary surface!
Fatal server error:
AddScreen/ScreenInit failed for driver 0

Hmm not sure about this - this worked many years ago....gotta look into this further. I've seen this before but it's been so long I don't remember what I did to make it work.

Hello,

Maybe this.

--
SeB

I actually found that, and while it allows the x server to start, it shows a blank screen. No errors in the console, just a blank screen. If I use x11vnc to connect to the session, it shows just fine and works fine - remotely. But the laptop screen is blank. Still looking into this, there is some sort of edib setting or something like that. Dang... memory - it's the second thing to go as we get older....

I would say no given that your use is no different from mine. I've only used the Nouveau driver on my nvidia machine (NVIDIA NVS 3100M) and it's always worked perfectly.

I don't know why your futzing with the proprietary driver and older versions of Slackware.

If by some odd chance nouveau doesn't work the non-kernel mode setting Xorg nv driver might also be an option, depending on your card.

Well, I got this hair up my butt about using the proprietary driver. Many years ago, it worked, and it annoys my OCD horribly when I can't get something to work. I finally gave up. Installed slacware-current. Nouveau driver works great. Life is good again.