Vendor Driver CD?

English Hardware
#1

Just got openSuSE 11.3 installed on my system and so far I like it better than my previous distro (Xubuntu). However, under YaST, it’s showing a Vendor Driver CD, which I think might be for my nVidia chipset on my Zotac ION motherboard. How do I enable full graphics support for my system?

I Xubuntu, it automatically picked it up and prompted me to use the nVidia drivers. It also added the nVidia PPA to the Software Sources. Does openSuSE have anything like this?

#2

I have never used this options or seen a Vendor Driver disk for openSUSE myself. Since the option is present, we can assume that such disks exist. In general however, you do not need to load a driver to work with your motherboard chipset. There are exceptions for 3D video card drivers. You mention nVidia though I don’t know which video card chipset you have. Following is a description of how to load the nVidia binary drive. You would download this driver from the nVidia Website for openSUSE (Linux 32 or 64 bit).

For the installation of nVidia cards you should look at this writeup first.

SDB:Configuring graphics cards - openSUSE

Here is the list of actions I used to install the nVidia drivers as I installed openSUSE 11.3:

  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.

Read it all through a couple of times. I had someone else say it did not work, but then came back and said it did and perhaps they had missed a step the first time through. It does work, once you understand what is going on.

Other issues that may require the loading of another driver is for network card support. This happens most often for Laptops. In general however, you will not be loading drivers for anything other than high speed video support.

Thank You,

#3

A Vendor Driver CD might work for some operating systems; however, it will be of
limited value for Linux. The reason is that a driver must be compiled using
exactly the same compiler and the same kernel headers as the kernel to be used
when it will be loaded. There is no way that a CD could contain all the
necessary options. The end result is that you either need to get an RPM built
for one of the standard kernels, or you need to build from source.

#4

Hi Larry
The version of SLED11 shipped by HP have their own customizations for
their hardware including kernel and drivers, including their own
customized update repositories (including the infamous broadcom-wl :wink: )

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 11.3 (i586) Kernel 2.6.34-12-desktop
up 11:42, 2 users, load average: 0.21, 0.15, 0.14
ASUS eeePC 1000HE ATOM N280 1.66GHz | GPU Mobile 945GM/GMS/GME

#5

On 07/15/2010 10:53 PM, malcolmlewis wrote:
> Hi Larry
> The version of SLED11 shipped by HP have their own customizations for
> their hardware including kernel and drivers, including their own
> customized update repositories (including the infamous broadcom-wl :wink: )

Good to know. Of course, my comments apply to openSUSE, not SLED.

#6

Yes, but at least there are some vendors who do provide some linux
drivers etc for their hardware, maybe one day even for openSUSE :slight_smile:

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 (x86_64) Kernel 2.6.32.13-0.4-default
up 1 day 15:13, 2 users, load average: 0.00, 0.02, 0.00
GPU GeForce 8600 GTS Silent - Driver Version: 256.35