Nvidia has released its latest version of the xorg 1.5 compatible drivers. You no longer need to follow my techique for 173.08 version driver . See my new blog entry for details Nvidia has released its
latest drivers for Linux which has support for the latest x.org versions (1.5) which are used in the Fedora 9 release (currently beta was released). Follow these steps in order to use the latest Nvidia driver in your Fedora 9
NOTE: I really tested and using these things in my laptop currently, things should work for others too. THIS METHOD IS COMPLETELY UNSUPPORTED BY FEDORA FOLKS, BUT WORKS. [NOTE] This process works on Latest Fedora 9 Too. But you'll not be able to make use of any of the glx capabilities , so all the commands like glxgears, nvidia-settings will give errors step-1 : Install the Latest nvidia driver (download rpm from freshrpms or livna)
yum install xorg-x11-drv-nvidia
step-2 : Nvidia suggests that we use the -ignoreABI option to use these drivers with the latest xorg servers. Follow these steps to setup such way.
1. Logout of X ( preferably go to runlevel 3 or 1, anything other than 5)
init 3
2. Rename the /usr/bin/Xorg binary to any other name like /usr/bin/Xorg.o
mv /usr/bin/Xorg /usr/bin/Xorg.0
3. Create a shell script named /usr/bin/Xorg
touch /usr/bin/Xorg
chmod +x /usr/bin/Xorg
4. Now edit the /usr/bin/Xorg and put these two lines
vi /usr/bin/Xorg
#!/bin/sh
exec /usr/bin/Xorg.0 -ignoreABI "$@"
5. close the file
6. Confirm that your /etc/X11/xorg.conf has the driver set as 'nvidia'
my xorg.conf follows
[nareshv@fallenAngel ~]$ cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Default Layout"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
Option "IgnoreABI" "true"
Option "omit xfree86-dga" # don't initialise the DGA extension
EndSection
Section "Files"
ModulePath "/usr/lib/xorg/modules/extensions/nvidia"
ModulePath "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
EndSection
Section "Module"
Load "glx"
Load "extmod"
Load "dbe"
Load "dri2"
Load "dri"
Load "xtrap"
Load "GLcore"
EndSection
Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "nvidia"
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Videocard0"
DefaultDepth 24
Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"
Option "UseDamageEvents" "True"
Option "OnDemandVBlankInterrupts" "True"
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection
Section "Extensions"
Option "Composite" "Enable"
EndSection
7. Reboot into runlevel 5.
init 5.
8. Now you should see the system using nvidia driver as the default one.
Few Gotchas:1. Currently only 2D works, NVIDIA is working on getting 3D as soon as x.org 1.5 version is released.
2. None of the 3d commands work glxinfo,glxgears, all because of lack of 3d support.
3. Now i am able to play the movies in mplayer when i've replaced the nvidia's libwfb.so with libwfb.so the xorg itself has.
-- last updated (Fri April 18 2008)
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