My install of 11.4 (& 12.1) won’t load unless I add the X11failsafe option to the loading of 11.4 (& 12.1) in the Grub menu.lst file. They bomb out after resetting the video when booting. I don’t need to do this with my 11.3 install. Upon closer inspection 11.3 is using the nouveau nVidia driver, whereas both 11.4 & 12.1 are using the fbdev nVidia driver.
My Hardware is a GEForce 6150SE and a Samsung SyncMaster 933SN.
I have a couple of questions
What do I lose by adding the X11failsafe option in Menu.lst?
Can I, should I, replace the fbdev driver with something else. If yes, What? Nouveau?
You lose performance when using x11failsafe option as it uses the FBDEV driver which is very slow wrt performance. Videos and screen redraws will be impacted.
IMHO if Nouveau was going to work, it would have worked already, unless of course the problem was with the Samsung SyncMaster 933SN and not with nouveau and the GEForce 6150SE.
I assume ( ? ) you tried the boot code ‘nomodeset’ (which for nVidia hardware will try to use the ‘nv’ graphic driver) and that also did not work ?
Typically when graphics don’t work for me, I do what you did, which is to get them working somewhere else. THEN AFTER that immediate ‘rush’ of ‘I must get this to work NOW ! ’ (which I also feel) expires, I then go back to the configuration that did not work, and ask myself, why ? … Now to find out ‘why’ it often helps to look at the log files. The openSUSE startup manual has an excellent section listing what many of the log files are for, but I know most people (including myself) dont’ read that except when bored. Still, in cases such as this, it can be a good idea to brush up on what log files might be of help.
May I suggest booting the PC so that it fails, and then boot again (with X11failsafe) so that it works, and then look at /var/log/Xorg.0.log.old (which has the previous boot) and /var/log/messages (which has multiple boots) and /var/log/boot.omsg (which has the previous boot). If you want others to look at those files to get their assessment, then post the content of the files (in separate links) in SUSE Paste.
At least that is how I would go about this. … … Good luck and please note deano_ferrari’s suggestion. If you disable kms in kernel and blacklist noueau in 50-blacklist.conf then you should be able to install and use the proprietary nvidia driver.
… Good luck and please note deano_ferrari’s suggestion. If you disable kms in kernel and blacklist noueau in 50-blacklist.conf then you should be able to install and use the proprietary nvidia driver.