Arch Linux

desheikh

Member

Registered: 2010-02-10

Posts: 5

Nvidia driver causing problems what should i use?

Hi,

Just switched my hard disk to a temporary machine and the nvidia card on it is causing crashes and random freezes on my machine.
Since its just temporary, I can't be bothered to mess around with the configuration at the moment.
Could someone please tell me what would be the default driver for me to use?
I don't have need for compositing or 3d acceleration.

Thanks in advance,
Ali

Bregol

Member

Registered: 2008-08-15

Posts: 175

Re: Nvidia driver causing problems what should i use?

The vesa driver is a good generic one.

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Snakeye

Member

From: Surrey BC

Registered: 2009-12-19

Posts: 91

Re: Nvidia driver causing problems what should i use?

I don't think putting a hard drive into another machine and expecting the video driver to work is a good idea unless the video card is the same type. Best check what driver is required for the new hardware.

thestinger

Package Maintainer (PM)

From: Toronto, Canada

Registered: 2010-01-23

Posts: 478

Re: Nvidia driver causing problems what should i use?

you probably need to reinstall the nvidia driver (or delete the config file manually) and run nvidia-xconfig etc. again if you switch cards/computers - it saves lots of per-card things in the xorg.conf and the nvidia settings config

davidm

Member

Registered: 2009-04-25

Posts: 371

Re: Nvidia driver causing problems what should i use?

Well seeing as how you don't need 3d perhaps nouveau might be worth a shot: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Nouveau

Word is that eventually it will replace the standard "nv" driver and it will be incorporated into the 2.6.33 kernel.  In my experience the nouveau driver is faster than the standard nv.

To use it you will need to remove your current nvidia drivers and then change your xorg.conf to use nouveau.  In addition you must enable KMS which is easy enough, see the wiki.  I just happened to change from the nvidia blob to nouveau last night after installing KDE 4.4... So far I am satisfied and feel better about supporting the open source driver.

Last edited by davidm (2010-02-11 09:17:50)

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desheikh

Member

Registered: 2010-02-10

Posts: 5

Re: Nvidia driver causing problems what should i use?

I have intel on my regular machine which hasn't posed any problems.
Think I'll just switch to vesa for the time being.

Thanks guys!

davidgurvich

Member

Registered: 2010-02-11

Posts: 118

Re: Nvidia driver causing problems what should i use?

Try just moving the xorg.conf file to xorg.conf.bak and see if the automatic xorg.conf works better.  That should work fine if hal is enabled.

shining

Pacman Developer

Registered: 2006-05-10

Posts: 2,043

Re: Nvidia driver causing problems what should i use?

nv is better than vesa
nouveau in better than nv
and that's for both features and performance.

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