Wed, 12 Jan 2005
Installing, Xfree86, Gnome and nvidia drivers with Debian testing
This is an account of my current foray into Linux desktop fun with my
latest distro
du jour Debian. I'm running it at work, which
is a 99% Windows network so the stakes are kind of high and if I'm able
to maintain everything I do already, I'm already ahead. So far I have
almost reached that goal and here I'm documenting the big hurdle of
getting the desktop system installed and configured.
Xfree86
$ apt-get install x-window-system
When configuring
do not choose the kernel's framebuffer
driver. We'll be installing our video driver later. Make sure you know
your monitor's limits. Two ways to do this are to write down your
settings from Windows or boot from a
Knoppix CD-R and look at
/etc/X11/XF86Config-4.
Follow the configuration questions and cross your fingers. If you got it
right, you should be able to type
startx and get a mouse
pointer and grey background. Press
crtl + alt + backspace to
exit it and proceed to the next step. If you get errors,
read
them! and try again. Repeat to yourself, "if at first I don't
succeed, try, try again."
The Gnome Desktop
$ apt-get install gnome gdm
Install the Gnome meta package and the display manager. Gdm, the
display manager, gives you a really pretty graphical login manager on
par with M$ and Apple's. Gdm might start automatically. If it doesn't
you can start it with a
/etc/init.d/gdm start. Play around with
Gnome a bit and configure it to your liking. I happen to be partial to
the theme named Amaranth and the simple graphical display manager login
screen.
Nvidia hardware accellerated drivers
This one takes a few more steps. If you do them all right it should take
about 20 minutes total. Be sure to add the contrib and non-free sections
to
/etc/apt/sources.list
- Update your kernel if you already haven't. Debian has lots of
kernels for lots of different CPUs. Use one. If you don't know how many
are available, search through the list with the Synaptic Package Manager in the System Tools
menu. Use kernel as the keyword.
- Install the kernel headers with apt-get install
kernel-headers-version where version is the same as above.
- Reboot into the new kernel
- Install the nvidia kernel source package with apt-get install
nvidia-kernel-source
- set these variables by typing
export KSRC=/usr/src/kernel-headers-version
export KSRC=/usr/src/kernel-headers-version
Again, replacing "version" with your kernel version
- Unzip the Nvidia source with cd /usr/src
tar -zxvf nvidia-source. That's not the exact name but it'll
be obvious.
- Make the kernel package with
/usr/src/modules/nvidia-kernel/debian/rules binary_modules
- Install nvidia-kernel-common with apt-get install
nvidia-kernel-common
- Install the nvidia kernel module debian package with
dpkg -i /usr/src/modules/nvidia-kernel-some-big-version.deb or
something like that
- Install the Xfree GLX driver with apt-get install
nvidia-glx
- Edit /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 be removing Load "GLcore" and
Load "dri". Double check Load "glx" is included.
Search for Driver "nv" and change it to Driver
"nvidia". Restart Gdm by typing ctrl + alt + F1, log in as
root then /etc/init.d/gdm restart and you should now have fat
3D accelleration. When you log back into X, type glxgears and
if the FPS value is in the thousands you should be good to go.
- Finally, add the word nvidia to the bottom of
/etc/modules to force the nvidia driver to load at boot
time.
posted at: 01:48 | path:
/hacking |
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