So I installed Slackware the other day. One of the first problems I had was a black screen during boot-up, which would occur before a login prompt. After some googling, hair-pulling and trial&error, I fixed it by adding "nomodeset" as a kernal parameter in Lilo.

Since then I've had many seperate little problems. After a day or so I began to suspect that some of these little problems are actually one problem: video driver.

Briefly, the problems are not-so-good playback in mplayer, inability to change gamma in x-windows and no apparent way to change the framebuffer resolution (the huge text of 640x480 squashed into my 16:9 laptop monitor just looks unprofessional).

I used lspci to determine that I had two video devices: an Intel and nvidia pair. Not a surprise: I knew this from when I ran Debian (and Mint) on this same computer. My understanding is that the Intel does regular video/display stuff and that the nvidia is only needed for 3d stuff. When I ran Debian, I opted to use only the Intel, as I had no need of 3d in Linux.

Anyway, lspci was also good enough to indicate the modules associated with each device. For the Intel, i915. For the nvidia, nouvaeu and nvidiafb.

Research indicated that it would be a bad idea to use nvidiafb and nouvueu at the same time. I noticed that Slackware in its default (just-installed) state has nvidiafb blacklisted, which would support that idea.

So at that point, I ran permutations of blacklisted/not blacklisted on these three modules of interest.

One: nvidiafb, if active, caused my computer to freeze during boot up, requiring me to lean on the power button to force the machine off.

Two: blocking none, either or both i915 and nouvue matters not at all. No benefits, no new problems.

So now I am stumped. Can I have a clue please?

I suppose I could go through the contortions to enable nvidia for 3d but I would really rather not mess with that. After all, I was able to do without it on previous distros, so I should be able to do that here in Slack?

Thank you in advance.

I believe you should be using the intel driver instead of the i915, but I don't have any Intel hardware running Linux.

This might give you more information on getting your hardware set up properly.

You might consider downloading the proprietary nvidia tarball and letting their install script tweak out your video. they've had pretty reliable X configuration for years. Unless you've got moral issues with closed source software I'd certainly try it since it only takes a few minutes.

The Nvidia OEM driver isn't necessarily needed to run an Optimus setup. Nouveau works fine, but perhaps you should start by posting the readout of 'lspci' so we can get a better idea of what exact hardware you have, and see if you might need other levels of help.

@bassmadrigal:
i915 is the Intel kernel module. The link you posted was for Nvidia.

It turns out that i915, the module shown in the lspci that i had done in my original post is actually the one I should be using.

I have stumbled onto the solution for three of my graphics-related problems. The solution was to replace the "nomodeset" kernel parameter in lilo with "backlight=vender".

That's right, I believe "intel" is the mesa/xorg driver.

And the link I posted was for an Nvidia Optimus setup, which contains a dual video card solution, which you stated you have. An Intel card for most of your basic graphics usage and an Nvidia card for the higher end stuff. Running an Optimus setup on Linux isn't nearly as smooth as on Windows since it won't switch for you automatically. I know you said you didn't use the Nvidia in your previous distros, but the information in the link may still help you get your Intel device set up even if you don't want to set up the Nvidia. I'm not sure since I kept my Optimus laptop running Windows after the frustrations on trying to get it working properly when I first got it (back in 2011 when Optimus was much more difficult to use in Linux -- I had a hard time even getting my Nvidia card to turn off so it wouldn't suck down my battery). I know things have improved since then, but I've decided to just keep Windows on that to make things easier on my wife and to run some programs without doing things I wasn't interested in doing (like the compromises you need to make to get Skype running on Slackware).