Salix Forums

I have an Aspire laptop with i5 and a Nvidia GT 420M that i'm trying to get up and running. I'm having a weird issue with the video though as it's a jumbled mess. As far as I can find so far X11 takes it's turn and the desktop turns into a mess of colors. I can back out into root and take a look, but i no longer can make a connection to "Xserver" any longer after that.

Any suggestions on where to go from here would be appreciated, and great OS really. I tried it on another build and a LIve CD on this one first and enjoyed it greatly! Good work!

Am afraid the nouveau driver provided by Salix and your nvidia video card don't go along very well. Suggest you install the nvidia driver. (Got the same problem with a i5 desktop with nvidia card)

Guess other people have got the same experience ...

I'm getting the feeling you're correct. After hours of headaches I may have to give up and try the 32bit version just to see if it works out. Did the Nvidia driver resolve your problem? I know in the Linux world that rarely means anything, but a vote for confidence in that direction and i'll give it a go.

There should be no difference at all between the 32bit and the 64bit version.

As I've found out, I was just hoping the live-CD was indication of something just going quirky since everything was running flawlessly. Now that i've confirmed that everything refuses to work for both as expected, i'll be certain to make this the last laptop purchase until there is a reasonable way to build my own. Luckily I get to enjoy Salix OS on my desktop, hopefully after a few more hours i'll be able to narrow down more precise questions to ask. Thanks for the heads up, at least i'm googling on the correct path now.

As you can see here http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/CodeNames, the nouveau driver is not up to speed with your nVidia chip set.
Why not take the advice provided and install the nVidia driver. You can find it here:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux-disp ... driver.htm
And here's instructions on how to install the driver
http://www.salixos.org/wiki/index.php/H ... DIA_driver
Note that you should have kernel-source installed before installing the driver.

Rich

Thanks for the reply Rich. I actually went this route a couple of hours ago and am still experiencing heavy turbulence. This is my first time using a driver from Nvidia, so I knew I wouldn't have a smooth ride. I've managed to successfully install the driver after blacklisting Nouveau, but now i'm snagged somewhere with X as I get the (EE) Failed to initialize GLX extensions (Compatible Nvidia X driver not found) /root/.xinitrc: line 63: zenity: command not found.

Then lose connection to X server. Starting to poke around in the folders reading to see what I can find out.

In case anyone reads this, after hours of learning more about Operating Systems I traced my problems through ridiculous amounts of text.

/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf is your target file to start with..
through trial and error/ and finding a few to disable here... blacklist these:

blacklist nvidiafb
blacklist vga16fb
blacklist nouveau
blacklist rivatvlacklist
blacklist rivafb

You may want to look up disabling agpgart or add agp=0 inside of lilo.conf.
Enter runlevel 3.
Try to install the Nvidia good luck drivers, keep your fingers crossed, and scream like you won the lottery when your machine boots up with a nice resolution and terrific colors.

Thanks for the Distro guys!

I don't know what you did but it worked almost always completely straightforward for me. Better than the proprietary ati drivers. And with 13.37 there were never problems.

It's really just:
blacklist noveau, install kernel source, now reboot
init 3, sh NVIDIA..., nvidia-xconfig, init 4, DONE

Maybe you missed the xconfig part (update of xorg.conf, which is since recently integrated into the main installer) and the agp kernel parameter might be some quirk needed for your card. I think the xconfig recomended in the guide though. Apart from that I think zenity is part of the default install.