Asus G60Jx (best buy) Nvidia Gforce 360m Driver install and Desktop Cube with KDE

I have an Asus G60Jx from Best Buy. It has an Nvidia Gforce 360m video card with 1gb of ddr5 video ram. I have tried the x drivers from yast and they do not work. I get a garbled screen and can not log in. I can only use the fail safe option to log into Open Suse 11.3. What is the easiest way to install Nvidia drivers? I also want to use the Compiz with the Desktop Cube and have had issues with doing that with Kubuntu. How can I have the Nvidia drivers for Open Suse 11.3 and the Compiz Desktop Cube? I know that with Ububtu/Kubuntu the drivers install with no issues for my Nvidia Gforce 360m card.

If the initial openSUSE 11.3 install works, but on the first reboot you see nothing or it is garbled, then you need to reboot, use the reset switch if necessary, and upon reboot type in the command “nomodeset” without the quotes on the options line for the normal openSUSE kernel load. This same command is on the fail-safe line which is why it works. Also, if you are using a TV or other HD type device, be aware that you may need to find a VGA monitor somewhere to continue the install. I am posting the instructions to install the nVidia driver and after the install, your video card will work properly, even with your HDTV. You need to read the following article.

SDB:Configuring graphics cards - openSUSE

When I install the latest video driver during openSUSE installation, I am doing the following items:

  1. During the install, when you have the option to change your booting setup, I add nomodeset to the kernel load command for the normal load/start of openSUSE. This kernel startup option is already present for the Failsafe selection for openSUSE.
  2. During the first start of openSUSE, I download the latest nVidia Video driver to the downloads folder.
  3. I change/save the System/Kernel option NO_KMS_IN_INITRD from “No” to “Yes” in the /etc/sysconfig Editor in Yast.
  4. I do an update of openSUSE on the first run of openSUSE and then a restart/reboot.
  5. In grub OS selection I add the command line option “3” to the openSUSE start line so that I just go to the run level three terminal prompt.
  6. I login in as root and change to the /home/user/Downloads folder.
  7. I run/install the NVIDIA video driver using “sh ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-256.35.run” and answer all questions as appropriate for my system.
  8. Type in reboot at terminal prompt to restart the system with new video driver.

Thank You,

that seems odd to me. Windows should have a slogan for Windows 7… It just works. In windows all i do is download the driver and click on setup.exe

This is why linux will never take off for the home user. all that to install a video driver.

If there is one thing for sure here, nVidia has made sure that their latest products, such as the new 300 and 400 series video cards, work with Windows 7 out of the box. Even so, nVidia has released a completely functional binary video driver that works very well with Linux and openSUSE 11.3. The problem is the 3D open-source driver that comes with openSUSE does NOT work properly with the 200, 300 or 400 series cards and requires the addition of the nomodeset kernel command most of the time during installation. When the present default nVidia video driver in openSUSE 11.3 was written, the 200 series cards were out, but not even nVidia had a Linux driver for all of them yet. I can only say that the Linux community and openSUSE are doing the very best they can. Your video card does work with openSUSE with just a little extra effort to load the freely provided and easy to obtain nVidia binary driver.

Thank You,

ok i followed your steps above and i have the issue with login into root. how do i log into root? what is the user name and password for root?

To use root the user name=root and password is the same as your first/main user you added to openSUSE. You can also log into openSUSE as a normal user, which is recommended and then if you are in say KDE, use the kdesu command added in front of the program name like “kdesu kwrite” to use kwrite as a root user. You must enter the root password to proceed. If you are running a Terminal session (looks like old DOS screen) just enter the command “su -”, where upon you will be asked for the root password and once entered, you will be root. The terminal prompt will turn red in most cases while root. Running as a root user should be limited to the time required to perform the required root task. This just means you want to log in as a normal as often as possible so as to lower your security risks while using openSUSE on the internet for instance. I use openSUSE as a normal user almost all of my time and only use root access when I must.

Thank You,