hello all,

im running slackware 11.0, 2.4 kernel, and the newest nvidia driver with my fx5200

my question is: why can't i use the newest driver with a 2.6 kernel...every other distro i play with seems to go to a blank screen when i install the driver.

just curious, wondering if anyone else has any experience with this.

~matt

The newest drivers certainly work with 2.6 kernels, that is what 90% of Linux users are running now on the desktop. Unless you meant why can't you use them with a 2.4 kernel, in which case the same answer still applies. Everyone is using 2.6 now, 2.4 is becoming unsupported at this point.

There have been considerable changes made to the drivers as of the last few versions though, which is likely where the problem has started. Even though you don't get an image on the screen, does X log any errors to the console, or is anything in syslog?

im running foresight 1.0 on one of my partitions, installed the driver via its package manager (ver. 9746 i believe)...and this is how the log ends [while the screen remains blank]

After you have installed the driver, are you allowing it to reconfigure your xorg.conf file?

Have you tried using the system-provided xorg configuration program to rebuild the file?

i followed foresight's wiki on Nvidia installation...just ran the code for the install then nvidia-xconfig and restarted the comp

I have a FX5200, i have no experience with foresight, just checked their wiki
With slackware i only leave x, run: sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-9746-pkg..blah as their Readme says. Always answer no to download anything and yes to build it.

Try this it worked for me.

Change your default depth to 24 in your xorg.conf

Samac

unfortunately changing the default depth to 24 did not solve the problem...

i dont get it, this has happened with every distro ive tried using a 2.6 kernel, thats why im still running a 2.4 in my slackware.

Try to eliminate the problem.

First set /etc/inittab default run level to 3

Install the 2.6 kernel, the kernel modules and the kernel source, making sure to ln -s /etc/rc.d/rc.modules to the new set of modules.

Change the video driver to a safe set of values ie. nv or vesa in /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Restart your computer.

You will find yourself at the command line, log in as a user, uname -a will confirm the kernel you are running,now startx. Exit to the command line.

If all has worked follow mannyslacks install instructions.

Startx again.

If it works modify your inittab back to 4, if not your problem is more likely to be related to either the xorg.conf or the modules.

Samac