Proprietary Video Drivers

[Shador]

It's really easy and straightforward to install the driver and the installer always did a good job for me unlike ATI's driver:

Download the NVidia Driver installer for Linux (x86/x86_64 depending on your Salix version) from their homepage by and remember the location you saved it to.

Close your X session:

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init 3

and login as root.

Now change to the directory you downlaoded the driver to:

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cd /my/path/to/installer

Run the installer (replace NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-190.53-pkg2.run with the name of the file you downloaded):

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sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-190.53-pkg2.run

For upgrading the driver you mustn't download the new version from their homepage, but can run the installer with the '--update' option. e.g:

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sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-190.53-pkg2.run --update

Nevertheless you still need to switch to runlevel 3.


BTW, I'm sure it would be also possible with nv and xrandr or if you prefer a (less powerful) GUI lxrandr,.
I'm using for presentations on my laptop with Intel graphics a small script invoking xrandr.
xrandr works with most drivers.
Just try xrandr, which should show all available outputs. To clone my laptop screen (LVDS) to an external beamer connected to the VGA port (VGA), I'd run xrandr --output VGA --same-as LVDS.
What you need to invoke depends on the available outputs and you screen configuration, of course.

[JRD]

Yes, but the question (if I'm not wrong) was about getting this working with the free "nv" driver, not with the proprietary "nvidia" driver. Am I correct ?

[Shador]

Yes, but the question (if I'm not wrong) was about getting this working with the free "nv" driver, not with the proprietary "nvidia" driver. Am I correct ?

Well, it wasn't quite clear, but as you might have seen I added that to my article anyway.
You were just too fast reading it.

[zenballer]

Okay.. big thanks Shador!
I appreciate the length and completeness of your explanation.

I tried xrandr and lxrandr before in CrunchBang Linux, but I guess I was completely on my own at that time so I couldn't make it work. I hope your tip would yield the best result.

Thanks JRD for being critical. I guess Shador's lengthy explanation has answered my question more than I hoped for.

[laprjns]

It's really easy and straightforward to install the driver and the installer always did a good job for me unlike ATI's driver:.......
..........

Don't forget to install the kernel-source package first!

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 slapt-get -i kernel-source