[ale] [video] I'm At My Whit's End: Nvidia and Linux

[Marc Ferguson]

Hi Gang,

As the subject implies, I'm at my whit's end when it comes to my current
specs and running the latest of anything! I know it's a pretty broad
statement... I tried running Ubuntu 10.04 Live and Fedora 13 Live, but
neither one of them is showing me any love.  I've load both distros,
independently, onto my USB flash drive in order to test and install them.

UBUNTU
I'll start off with this one because it's easy. So; with a fresh quick
format and then load the distro files onto my USB key, I boot the Ubuntu
flavor. I get their startup screen and then it gives me the options to boot,
test, etc. When I try to boot, it seems to go into some odd loop and it
never starts the kernel. It counts down 5, 4, 3, 2, 1... <repeat> 5, 4, 3,
2, 1... So; that's the end of that experiment. :(

FEDORA
Now; this is my distro of choice, but I have been having serious
video-related issues since the end of Fedora 10. Currently I'm running a
nVidia GeForce 9400 GT. Before it was an 8600 GT. I stick with nVidia
because I game on my Windows partition... but I've been without a linux
desktop for about a month and it's really starting to get to me. I've tried
just about everything to get nVidia support.  The "nv" drivers aren't
working. When the x server tries to load them I literally lose the signal to
my monitor and I have to reboot the machine. I end up changing xorg.conf to
use the "vesa" drivers just to log in. I've tried the forums, IRC, bug
reports... no one has an answer as to why it's not working.

With the latest Live boot experiment, when Fedora tries to load it's x
server the oddest thing happens. I get a grid of images on my screen. Not of
Fedora Live, but my last Microsoft Windows session.  It seems that there's a
cache in the video card (I really don't know, just a guess). The grids are
all out of sync so nothing matches, but if you were to try and put them
together it would be my desktop in Windows. I've tried booting into runlevel
3 and creating an xorg.conf file, setting it to "vesa" and still no luck.

So; I can't get into Fedora and I can't get Ubuntu to start. Any suggestions
before I put a gun to my head? Thanks. :D

Oh my specs are:

* Motherboard: BioStar TA690g AM2 (onboard video ATI)
* Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3600+
* Memory: 4BG
* Video: nVidia GeForce 9400 GT

-- 
Marc Ferguson

Registered Linux User #410978
www.fergytech.com | www.digitalalias.net

"When life gives me lemons... I make Linuxaide, hmm good stuff!"
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mail.ale.org/pipermail/ale/attachments/20100528/04820d9e/attachment.html