Linux on nvidia 8000 series?

I remember reading that it was difficult to Linux running on these newer cards, but that was a few months ago. Is it possible to install, say, ubuntu on a notebook with these newer cards? Does one have to do anything special in order for it to work?

 

It is working fine for me, 8600 GT card in a Inspirion 1520. I did have to install the propritary NVidia drivers though. There is a program you can run, Envy, that will automatically download the correct drivers and install them for you. You can find it here,

http://albertomilone.com/nvidia_scripts1.html

 

ive never used envy, but i got 7.10 working on my laptop, i posted the howto here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=180222

 

Cool. I too, have an 8600GT. I'll try that out then. So, how does that work? You install Ubuntu like normal, and then do you just need to get that proprietary driver for the card to work properly? Or to get it to work at all? What I mean is, how can you install Ubuntu if it can't use the card in the first place? Or will the card work a bit, but just not to full functionality without that driver or something?

Meh, that's all horribly phrased, but hopefully you understand.

 

Ubuntu is good because it will recognize that the video is not working and set it to fail safe. You'll be able to boot to a normal enviroment. Then just install envy, it gets the right driver, then it has a nice GUI that allows you to change anything you need just like windows

 

Alright, cool.

One more question:

I'm running XP right now, but I'm considering installing Vista 32 and then dualbooting with Ubuntu.

So, could I just install Vista (using one partition...I forget if the windows installer lets you format and make multiple partitions or not, I just know the Ubuntu installer will let you) and then use the Ubuntu installer to cut off part of the Vista partition and use it as its own?

 

My Ubuntu 7.10 install today correctly detected my 8600m and set the WSXGA+ resolution of 1680x1050.

Installing the proprietary drivers only gives you hardware accelleration, to use 3-D and GPU-intensive programs like the Beryl/Compiz window manager extenstions.

My desktop didn't look any different before the NVidia driver was used. It just added the extra beryl/Compiz effects like window wobble and cubed desktop after the upgrade.

And I'm still typing this on OS X. ;-)

FWIW, I resized my primary Windoze pertition, and created two new extended partitions for Linux. Gparted seems to work OK on NTFS in this rev.

 

Install Vista, create partions you need. In Ubuntu, delete the partion you want to use, and set it to install to the free space.

 

Alright, thanks. I'll do that.

 

Bouldergeek, when I first ran Envy to get my Nvidia card working it did not modify my /etc/X11/xorg.conf file. My display appeared the same as when I first installed. I went in and physically modified my xorg.conf file

Scroll down toward Section "Screen"

I had

Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"

in all the subsections.

I had to add my max screen resolution, 1440x900, to all the lines so they looked like this.

Modes "1440x900" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"

After that (I can't recall if I had to restart or not) my screen displayed at it's full resolution. Take a look at your xorg.conf file to see if your maximum screen resolution is listed. You will need to access this file with root privaleges in order to change it.

 

I'm familiar with having to hack the Xorg.conf file. But, that's somewhat of a relic back to the bad old days, in my opinion.

I didn't run Envy on this Vostro install. I just installed Ubuntu and requested the proprietary video drivers. All was super easy, and without any vi or emacs fiddling.

I had to get vi out to trim down the grub configs, but other than that, it was Grandma-simple.

What distro are you on?

 

Runnin 64bit Fiesty, I have it running pretty stable and how I like it so i'm not rushing to upgrade to Gutsy. Maybe tomorrow.........

 

I totally spaced that I could install 64-bit. I get s used to Windows not being 64-bit even when their products say they are. I don't even think of it on PCs.

But, I've been running 64-bit on Suns for 10 years.

What's the performance boost on 64-bit with the C2D? Your machine and mine are nearly identical.