NVIDIA Graphics
Introduction
There are three main drivers for nvidia graphics card on linux, one of which is shipped with slackware:
- nv (shipped with slackware) - this provides basic 2d acceleration, not 3d
- nvidia (NVidia's proprietary driver) - this is the generally recommended driver, providing good 2d and 3d performance
- nouveau - an attempt to reverse-engineer the nvidia driver; not particular usable or stable
This article assumes you want the 'nvidia' driver; if you do not, generic (IE not slackware-specific) documentation available.
Obtaining the driver
The driver can be found at [1].
Installing the driver
The driver must not be installed while X is running; if X is running, stop X, install the driver, then start X again how you normally would (eg "telinit 4", or "startx").
Download the driver, then "sh FILENAME.run" in the directory you downloaded it do, replacing "FILENAME" with the name of the file you downloaded.
XOrg config
There are two options:
nvidia-xconfig
This is an automated tool, that the above installer offers to run for you. It attempts to modify your XOrg.conf automatically to use the nvidia driver.
Manual Editing
Find the section relating to your graphics card in /etc/X11/xorg.conf, and change the driver to "nvidia". If you want to change the default settings, for example, add dual-head support, see the readme installed into /usr/doc/NVIDIA_GLX-1.0/.
Checking It's Working
- Check "nvidia-settings" runs in X
- Check "glxinfo | grep direct" returns "direct rendering: Yes"
- Check "glxgears" gives a reasonable result (google for comparisons)
Pay close attention to specific model of graphics card when checking for suitable glxgears results; keep in mind that glxgears isn't really a good 'benchmark', but should indicate if DRI is working properly or not. For example:
- On an Intel X3100, a good result is somewhere around 1000 FPS
- On an NVidia 7800GTX, a good result is somewhere above 12000 (though 15k is fairly normal)
Translations
Mehdi Esmaeelpour translated this article to persian - article link