Requesting help installing Nvidia drivers [Using 970]

English Hardware
1

Hello,

I recently installed Opensuse 13.2 and am having trouble figuring out the proper way to install the proprietary drivers from Nvidia for the GTX 970.

I initially tried using the one click installer located here > https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:NVIDIA_drivers < but after using the 8 series and later version and restarting the machine, the machine froze on the login screen. I rebooted it into recovery mode and using snapper went back to the original snapshot.

Reading more I’ve seen you can use bumblebee, > https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:NVIDIA_Bumblebee < which seems to be using a newer driver than the one click install.

or install the drivers “the hard way” > https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:NVIDIA_the_hard_way <

and in looking through the forums I’ve seen a couple threads on the topic,
here > https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/502180-openSUSE-13-2-and-GTX-970?highlight=gtx+970 <
and here > https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/503858-Nvidia-card-blocking-boot-after-clean-install-nvidia-drivers?highlight=nvidia+970 <

Those users seem to have had some success but I couldn’t figure out the entire path they followed from those threads. I’m new to Linux and could use some guidance on which path to follow.

System Info: 5280K, Gigabyte UD4, 16GB Crucial Ram, Gigabyte 970, Opensuse 13.2 installed on an SSD with Win 8.1 following this guide (but using btrfs instead of ext4) > https://tweakhound.com/2014/11/13/dual-boot-opensuse-13-2-and-windows-8-1-uefi/ <

If there’s any other information I can provide please let me know, thanks for any help and sorry if I’m missing something obvious.

2

The current G03 driver version (340.xx) does not support the 970 yet.
The packages have been updated to the latest 346.xx version recently though, they should arrive in the repo shortly (in the next days?).
It should work then.

Reading more I’ve seen you can use bumblebee, > SDB:NVIDIA Bumblebee - openSUSE Wiki < which seems to be using a newer driver than the one click install.

Bumblebee is for hybrid systems, i.e. (mostly) laptops that have both intel and nvidia graphics.
And the nvidia-bumblebee package will not work without bumblebee AFAIK.

There’s another driver package available here:
http://software.opensuse.org/download.html?project=home%3ABumblebee-Project%3AnVidia%3A346.22&package=x11-video-nvidia
But I have no idea whether this will work on a non-bumblebee system. A quick look at the specfile would suggest it does, but I don’t want to guarantee that.

or install the drivers “the hard way” > SDB:NVIDIA the hard way - openSUSE Wiki <

This should work, but you absolutely need to download the 346.xx driver. Older ones will not work for you.
And be aware that you have to reinstall the driver after certain system updates (basically xorg-x11-server, Mesa-libGL1, and the kernel).

3

Thanks for the info. I think it will be better for me to wait a bit for it to be incorporated than to have something go wrong down the road with an update and have to do an reinstall then. Thanks again.

4

It is only a Video driver no need to reinstall the OS even if it goes sidewise. But at the moment if you want the drivers you have to install the hard way with the installer from the NVIDIA site. Nothing wrong doing that but if you should install the hardway and want to switch to the repos once available uninstall the hard way before adding the repo packages. Also you be prepared to manually reinstall if the kernel gets an update if done the hard way.

BTW the hard way is not really so hard.

5

FYI, there are new G04 driver packages in the nvidia repo since recently, which should support your GTX 970.

Unfortunately the wiki page hasn’t been updated yet with a new 1-click install for the new driver.
So add the repo in YaST->Software Repositories->Add->Community Repository (not necessary if you still have it in your list), and then install x11-video-nvidiaG04 via YaST->Software Management or:

sudo zypper in x11-video-nvidiaG04