Arch Linux

bulio

Member

From: Montreal, QC

Registered: 2008-03-23

Posts: 8

NVIDIA Linux drivers problem

Hey all,

I have a Dell Inspiron 1520 laptop with an Nvidia 8600M GT graphics card. I have tried installing Nvidia's latest linux drivers with their .sh installer from their site, but it seems that using any driver past 100.14.09 causes X to break. When I startx using a driver > 100.14.09 all I get is a white screen that slowly fades to a weird grey, or sometimes the colors get all garbled (ex. white, green, red all over the place)

I have no idea whats wrong, so right now I'm sticking with 100.14.09, but I'm just wondering if anyone has encountered this problem and what you did to work around it. I have had the problem on both Arch and Ubuntu.

Thanks

dyscoria

Member

Registered: 2008-01-10

Posts: 1,007

Re: NVIDIA Linux drivers problem

Arch provide a package for nvidia which is the latest version: "pacman -Sy nvidia"

I'm using a dell aswell and the arch nvidia package works fine. Just run "nvidia-xconfig" after you've installed it.

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wonder

Developer

From: Bucharest, Romania

Registered: 2006-07-05

Posts: 5,941

Website

Re: NVIDIA Linux drivers problem

yep. the latest nvidia package will screw up display. the solution is simple.
use nvidia 100.14.19 and export edid.
nvidia-settings->PFD-0->Acquire EDID
save it in /etc/X11. I saved mine with edid.bin name.
then add to xorg.conf

Option "CustomEDID" "DFP-O:/etc/X11/edid.bin"

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Give what you have. To someone, it may be better than you dare to think.

bulio

Member

From: Montreal, QC

Registered: 2008-03-23

Posts: 8

Re: NVIDIA Linux drivers problem

Thanks!

Will this be fixed in future releases, or must I do this upon every new install?

wonder

Developer

From: Bucharest, Romania

Registered: 2006-07-05

Posts: 5,941

Website

Re: NVIDIA Linux drivers problem

don't know. you don't need to do that every new install. xorg.conf doesn't overwrite and edid.bin will be in /etc/X11. you can comment that to see if this bug is fixed in the future releases

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Give what you have. To someone, it may be better than you dare to think.

brebs

Member

Registered: 2007-04-03

Posts: 3,742

Re: NVIDIA Linux drivers problem

It'll probably be fixed in one release, then broken again in the next

Nvidia are bad at drivers. See forum for all the problems - lockups, black screen, white screen, striped screen, 100% fanspeed, corrupted textures. Every problem imaginable