NVIDIA-Commercial-Drivers

Installing commercial Nvidia drivers in 64-bit Slackware 13.37

This tutorial assumes you have a fresh full install of Slackware 13.37 x86_64.

What you'll need:

• NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-270.41.06.run [Version from official nvidia website as of 4-28-11]
• xf86-video-nouveau-blacklist-noarch-1.txz [This package can be found on the slackware 13.37 DVD in /extra]
• A reboot

Once you've obtained these files, stick them somewhere (for example, /tmp).

To get the Commercial Nvidia driver working you'll need to remove the nouveau driver, and for good measure, make sure it is blacklisted.

Do the following as root:

removepkg xf86-video-nouveau
installpkg /tmp/xf86-video-nouveau-blacklist-noarch-1.txz
chmod a+x /tmp/NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-270.41.06.run

Now it's time to install the NVIDIA Driver:

cd /tmp && ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-270.41.06.run

Follow the on-screen prompts to complete the install. Also be sure to include the 32-bit gl content. (Sorry for lack of detail here, I'll try and add more detail later)

If the driver builds successfully without error then proceed.

Invoke the following:

nvidia-xconfig

Allow it to make the change to /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Now reboot:

reboot

Once your system has rebooted ensure that the 'nouveau' driver is NOT present and that the 'nvidia' driver is.

The following command should return nothing:

lsmod | grep nouveau

Now check for the nvidia driver:

lsmod | grep nvidia

You should see something like:

root@slackbox:~# lsmod | grep nvidia
nvidia              10486926  40 
agpgart                28874  1 nvidia
i2c_core               19769  2 nvidia,i2c_piix4

You should now have a working commercial Nvidia driver and be able to start X11 without issue.