Nvidia Driver on Linux – Easy, and Quick

There is a buzz that installing the Linux based Nvidia accelerated graphics driver is complicated. I consider it rather straight forward. First install build-essential, and the headers for your kernel. Those may appear to be some bigs words in the previous sentence, but it is really one line in a terminal window. Build essential installs GCC and its dependencies:

sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-$(uname -r)

Now download the latest and greatest Nvidia driver. Choose the correct build type for your architecture. Conveniently save the file to your desktop and rename it to nvidia.run. The change your tty to another. To change to tty2 press control-alt f2.

Shut down gdm, which will stop X11:

sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop

Or if you are using the new process manager in Ubuntu 9.10 you can use also:

sudo service gdm stop

Then execute the Nvidia installation script. Login to the command prompt and navigate to the desktop:

cd Desktop
sudo sh nvidia.run

Basically answer yes to everything, let the driver compile, and then when it asks you to configure the xorg.conf file, let it. Nowadays the Nvidia driver basically works out of the box. In the past, with Ubuntu in particular, you had to comment out the included driver in Ubuntu’s modules package, otherwise the custom compiled driver would not load on startup. The open source driver used to be commented out in /etc/default/linux-restricted-modules-common (comment NV); note that this is not needed any more except in Hardy (8.04).

Then start your gdm session, which will take you back to the login window, or your desktop depending on your startup settings:

sudo /etc/init.d/gdm start

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Linux CUPS Configuration – Foomatic

First install all needed packages. Your going to need cups, and the client, and the foomatic and openprinting drivers.

sudo apt-get install cupsys cupsys-client

Then install everything in:

sudo apt-cache search foomatic

If its an HP printer your going to want that library. HP has an auto setup script. Install the package and run:

sudo hp-setup

Installing all the foomatic, openprinting, and hp drivers the hp-setup script will detect printers on the network and will give you options as to which driver to use. To manage everything I recommend webmin. Download webmin from sourceforge, and use dpkg to install it. It will say dependencies are needed so just run:

sudo dpkg --configure -a

Webmin will install and you will access it from:

https://localhost:10000

You can configure other printers (other than HP) from here. You should set the printer to static ip address then you will configure the printer to that IP and port 9100. Select the corresponding from from the CUPS menu at the bottom of the printer configuration page. Some printers need a driver straight from openprinting.com. Copy the ppd to a folder in /var/share/ppd/openprinting. Create a folder with the manufacturers name if need be. Install it the same way as other printers (through webmin), and select the corresponding ppd drivers, in the CUPS section, the add new printer configuration page.

Secure Remote Connections – Tech Support »« Windows 7 – Mapped Network Drive – Extremely Buggy

ATI Catalyst Linux – 9.6 Good and Getting Better, but still a Pain in the Bug

ATI, or AMD’s catalyst drivers for linux have come a loooong way. They are currently rather good, but can be very buggy with certain configurations. Partial hardware acceleration works fine and tearing using XV has been substantially reduced. You must make care to configure xorg.conf properly otherwise your X server will crash. Well to be more specific using Compiz only will not necessarily crash your system independent of the configuration, but when you start using graphics and processor heavy applications you’ll see substantial system instability. For example I used compiz and the default xorg.conf for a long time with little problems. But then I threw MythTV into the mix. Its processor and graphics requirements caused X to free constantly and predictably. I boiled the problem down to opengl, which is easily disabled in the device section of xorg.conf with the line: Option "OpenGLOverlay" "off" Then also turn off video overlay: Option "VideoOverlay" "off" Then turn on textured video and sync it: Option "TexturedVideo" "on" Option "TexturedVideoSync" "on" For me this substantially increases X stability and I no longer can predictably have a system hard lock. Yes I still have an occasional program free but I dont have to do a hard reboot, which is really annoying. In MythTV you should configure the frontend to use XV-Blit with no deinterlacing if your capturing HD video via firewire. The video playback on an integrated 3300HD chipset is quite impressive and the minimal tearing experienced I expect to be resolved in a realease or two.

Rock Your Desktop – Ubuntu, Windows, MAC, MythTV – Compiz Tweak Fest »« Stereo Bluetooth iPhone 3.0 Support

Attansic atl1e eeePC 1000 LAN Driver Compile Install

To install the the lan driver for the eeePC 1000 you need build dependencies. If you are using a usb cd then after installation just use: sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-$(uname -r) unrar If you don’t have anything you need to get the build dependencies onto your system the hard way. Luckily I spent 2 hours downloading every single package and associated dependencies from the Hardy repositories. The packages are for a default Hardy kernel 2.6.24 series straight off the CD. I also included the packages rerquired to build a kernel if you want to build the eeePC kernel provided at eeepc.asus.com. hardy_i386_build_dep_with_Kernel_build_support.tar.bz2 Unzip the  package and use dpkg to take care of everything. Change to the directory: cd Desktop/hardy_i386_build_dep_with_kernel_build_support sudo dpkg -i * You will have to flip back and forth with the following command: sudo dpkg –configure -a Lots of files require configuration prior to installation of subsequent files. This took some time, but most of the time was because the packages were bad downloads and I had to keep downloading them form different sources till they all worked. The folder contains the default kernel headers requires, and basically its an all in 1 package with everything you’ll need. Now download the driver source direct from ASUS: http://dlsvr04.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/socket775/P5KPL-CM/LinuxDrivers.zip Unzip, and cd to the directory. Then cd to the src directory. Compile:

sudo KBUILD_NOPEDANTIC=1 make
sudo KBUILD_NOPEDANTIC=1 make install

After compilation and installation:

cd /lib/modules/2.6.24-19-generic/kernel/drivers/net/atl1e/atl1e.ko
sudo insmod ./atl1e.ko

Then run:

sudo depmod so modprobe knows the driver exists. If for some reason the driver
dousn't load automatically you can manually add it to /etc/modules.

AWN – Avant Window Navigator – Install Current Version »« eeePC 1000 Intel 945G Express Chipset

8.04 Hardy Heron Obvious Fixes (WPA PSK and Broadcom Wireless Driver)

For a long time I was annoyed by having to input my routers WPA PSK passcode each time I booted. At minimum I would have to unlock the keyring containing the passcode, even after checking the button to automatically unlock it upon login. These issues are resolved in the new release of Ubuntu. The new version has definitely provided many upgrades to increase stability, and further polish this awesome Linux distribution. Also regarding Broadcom wireless card support, ndiswrapper is no longer needed. The new B43 driver uses the well known fwcutter (firmware cutter) very effectively. The driver allows full speed data transmission that was typically only achievable using ndiswrapper. Now, right out of the box Ubuntu is fully compatible with Nvidia graphics cards, and basically all wireless cards. With each new release I see less reasons to stick with Windows

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