FC4 kernel with nvidia driver

[alan]

On Sun, 26 Feb 2006, Bob Chiodini wrote:

> On Sun, 2006-02-26 at 08:05 -0800, Todd Simi wrote:
>> If you download from NVIDIA, make sure you check for all the patches you
>> will need.  There are several depending on which kernel version you are
>> running.
>>
>>>> From: Matthew Saltzman <mjs at ces.clemson.edu>
>>>> Reply-To: For users of Fedora Core releases <fedora-list at redhat.com>
>>>> To: For users of Fedora Core releases <fedora-list at redhat.com>
>>>> Subject: Re: FC4 kernel with nvidia driver
>>>> Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2006 10:11:36 -0500 (EST)
>>>>
>>>> On Sun, 26 Feb 2006, Randy Vice wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Are there any rpm'd FC4 kernels for nvidia's driver?  I know, evil
>>>>> closed source driver, but AFAIK, I'll need it for using Cedega
>>>>> (transgaming). Figure closed source driver is better then dealing with
>>>>> multi-booting XP with FC. ;)
>>>>
>>>> There are NVidia driver RPMs for FC4 kernels at rpm.livna.org.
>>>> Alternatively, you can get the drivers directly from nvidia.com and
>>>> rebuild them yourself for any FC4 kernel.
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>
> Seems to work directly from nvidia here.  Kernel 2.6.15-1.1831_FC4.
>
> AMD athlon 64 running 32-bit FC4.  The 64 bit version works for the
> 64-bit FC4 distro as well.

You will need to have "kernel-devel" installed to be able to build the 
nVIDIA closed source driver.  (Easy with yum if you are using the latest 
kernel.  A pain if you are not. There is no mechanism to get older 
kernel-devel packages with yum.) Also make sure you have ncurses 
installed. (Used by the program that builds and installs everything.)

Building it for FC5 is a bit more challenging.  Due to changes in the 
current kernel, you have to patch a few things.  (One patch if you are 
using i386 and two if you are using x86_64.)  The patches are posted on 
nVIDIA's discussion board.  I can make a tarball of the two patches if 
you can't find them.  (It is on my laptop.)  Also you need to have 
xorg-sdk installed. (Make sure ncurses is updated to current. Some of the 
older ncurses packages in FC5t[1-2] had problems.

The next release of the nVIDIA driver should support FC5, as well as some 
stuff needed for the new xgl desktop eyecandy.

Some applications claim to need an older version of the nVIDIA drivers. 
(Transgaming wine for some games.)  I have yet to get it to work correctly 
on my video card, so I am not so certain.

BTW, I have built the kernel for both i386 and x86_64 without too many 
problems.

-- 
"George W. Bush -- Bringing back the Sixties one Nixon at a time."