I have tried a bunch of things, but can’t seem to get it to give me any 3D acceleration. Every time I run SaX2, I get the following popup error message:
3D acceleration not supported
SaX2 cannot offer activation of the 3D
subsystem because your graphics
card/driver doesn’t support 3D
Question number one: How do I find out if the hardware actually supports 3D? It’s a cheap chipset integrated into my motherboard, so there’s a possibility that it doesn’t do it. On the other hand, people with GeForce 200 series hardware are reporting 3D, and 6100 is higher than that. The press releases seem to indicate that it supports 3D, but their language is nebulous.
I’m running SuSE 10.3. I tried the YaST way, but couldn’t get that to work. I downloaded version 190.42 from nvidia and executed the sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-190.42-pkg2.run, and it reported success. My xorg.conf file looks like it’s using the correct driver. hwinfo -gfxcard reports nvidia driver and nvidia module. I tried the nopat boot option. I’m running out of ideas. I need help from someone with more expertise or who has this working.
One thing that worries me… YaST Hardware Info is reporting that the display x11 server is nv. Should that be nvidia as well?
Thanks for the reply, Bruno. It’s good to know there are 6 series chipsets that are working with 3D.
Not sure about the nv thing, though. It looks like it’s using the right driver for some stuff… only the server thing under Driver Info #0 says nv. Here is the output from hwinfo:
Here’s the SaX.log file. It looks to me like it’s getting the right driver. Should there be something other than <none> next to the Card3D0 lines in the 3D detection data section?
Yes, I see what you mean. Apparently it is using nvidia, not nv.
But the first thing I’d do is upgrade from 10.3 (which is not supported anymore, I think) to 11.1 if you’re into KDE 3.x and stable system, or 11.2 if you don’t mind a period of adjustment.
AFAIR there were some issues with nvidia and X at the time of 10.x, solved with a couple updates.
I’ve been using opensuse since 10.0, and from 11.0 on installing nvidia drivers is almost transparent to the user, you just have to add the nvidia community repo and Yast will automatically install the driver. It worked everytime, with add-on and onboard cards from Geforce 6xxx to 8xxx.
The only time it went wrong was when I tried the one-click option, that mixed both driver versions (legacy and newer cards) in my system. Solved it by removing all nvidia packages in yast, doind “sax2 -r -m 0=nv” and starting from scratch.
I strongly suggest that you upgrade, if possible at all. I’ve installed 11.1 and 11.2 in at least two machines each, and both where very satisfactory (especially 11.1 which is already very mature and stable).
Ugh. I tried that. It broke a bunch of stuff, most of which I was either able to fix or do without. Unfortunately there was one critical application which wasn’t supported – VMWare. So I reverted back to 10.3, which broke even more stuff, and now I’m limping along with a broken system. It does everything I NEED, and I’m systematically getting other stuff working. However, unless VMWare starts supporting 11.x that’s not an option.
WHAT??? I’ve installed VMWare Player 2.5 and 3.0 in 11.1 and 11.2 respectively (just yesterday I installed one) and it worked perfectly. Version 3.0 even come with the option to update the vmware-tools from their site, you don’t need vmware-Workstation or Server to do it anymore.
Just remember you need GCC, Kernel-source and make installed. If you install the base and kernel development patterns you get them (and a lot more).
Note that I’m talking about an install, not an upgrade. If you’re installing 11.1/KDE3 and your home directory is in a separate partition (so you keep it as home in the new install) you don’t even have the pain to reconfigure most of your desktop and app options, you just have to install the apps you use.
Sounds like they may have gotten things working better since I last tried. I’m running vmware-Workstation, but only because when I installed it nothing else worked. It may be that vmware player or xen would work for me now, or even VirtualBox. I haven’t really looked at them for a while.
Maybe it’s a good time for me to try an upgrade. I have a day or two I could waste if it turns out to be as bad as last time.
Take some time to prepare yourself, go through oldcpu’s pre-install recommendations and you should be quite allright. If in doubt try the KDE4 livecd first, to be doubly sure.
Just for your info, oS11.2 installation (KDE4+Gnome+XFCE+base-devel+kernel-devel) I did last wednesday from scratch in a laptop with a new HD:
time from start to first reboot: 17 min.
time from autoconfig to first KDE4 login: 5 min.
time for updates: 11 min (at 1mbit/s with wired connection)
Even beagle would consume the cpu only if there was no activity, so much so that I didn’t even remove it.
Then about half-an-hour more for vmware-player (that I had previously downloaded), (s)mplayer, codecs, TT fonts and a few apps, and I was good to go. The fastest release ever! And booting to an usable KDE desktop takes 51-53 seconds. Shutdown takes no more than 20 seconds. All that on a relatively slow laptop with a 5500 RPM HD.
Later I ran the wireless installer script for bc43whatever and struggled a bit with knetworkmanager, and that’s all.
Anyway, 11.2 still have some glitches to be resolved, but is good (will be better after a couple months of updates). 11.1 is not so fast but works flawlessly for me.