Re: Recommended video card for Redhat

From: David Utidjian (utidjian_at_nospamremarque.org)
Date: 01/11/04 

Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 15:41:22 GMT

On Sat, 10 Jan 2004 22:30:59 -0800, linuxquestion wrote:

> So get this. Each time you upgrade your kernel,
> you get to struggle upgrading your Nvidia video
> drivers once again too. Isn't that nice.
>
> And they have a really difficult time installing
> with more than one kernel on the machine.
>
> I'm fed up. I just expect the video card to WORK.
> It is most fundamental.

All the Nvidia cards I have ever owned have worked well with Red Hat out
of the box just using the default nv driver that comes with XFree86. The
ONLY reason you may need the Nvidia drivers is if you also need to use
accelerated 3D. If you don't need that you don't need the Nvidia drivers
from Nvidia.

IF you DO need accelerated 3D then you DO need the Nvidia drivers.

When the kernel is upgraded the driver module has to be rebuilt to match
the kernel. This is as simple as running (as root):

sh NVIDIA-driver-you-downloaded

and answering a few yes/no questions then switching back to the GUI
runlevel:

telinit 5

Whole process takes about 30 seconds.

To make this process even simpler I just keep the the Nvidia driver
installer I downloaded in my /root directory. When I install a new kernel
and reboot I tell grub to boot to runlevel 3 (console mode). Just hit "a"
when the grub screen comes up and then "3" and Enter. It is really REALLY
easy.

Incidentally Nvidia uses the same driver for Linux as it does for Windows.

The driver works well out of the box... if you want to tweak it for some
reason, yes, you will have to read the excellent docs that Nvidia supplies
in order to find out what the tweaks are.

Again if you don't need accelerated 3D, which you only need for some games
and engineering/scientific apps... then just use the stock nv diver and
skip all the (minor) hassle.

For me, Nvidia cards are some of the best out there. I have had very good
use out of them.

-DU-...etc...

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