I’ve decided: today is the day that I setup OpenSuse 10.2 on my new system. I just built this PC two weeks ago, and it’s been running Windows XP the entire time. My “old” PC got converted into my full-time OpenSuse box, but I like to have Linux on all of my boxes, at least in a dual-boot setup. Here’s what’s in my new system:
AMD Athlon64X2 6000+
Gigabyte GA-3PXSL-RH MB
PNY Geforce 8800 GTS 320MB
2GB DDR2-667 RAM
Seagate 250GB SATA2 HDD
WD 160GB SATA2 HDD
ASUS 18X DVD+-RW w/Lightscribe SATA
Plextor 48x CDRW IDE
Creative Audigy2
I booted off the DVD, and right away ran into problems. As soon as the bootloader loaded the kernel, my screen goes black. I figure it is probably something to do with my video card, so I reboot the system and press F3 at the DVD boot screen and change my screen to “VESA”. Kernel loads, I see text scrolling on the screen, and then the system locks. I reboot and do the same thing, expecting different results for some reason, but it still doesn’t work. So off to Google I go, searching for the last thing that is listed on my screen before the lockup, “net: registered protocol family 2 opensuse” . The first result has the answer; add maxcpus=0 as a kernel parameter during setup. That does the trick, and the system boots into the Suse installer. I chose all the normal additional things I do during setup (Kernel-sources, C/C++ Dev tools, findutils-locate and nano), and installation proceeds as I would expect it too. I let it update all of the installed software, so it’s less to do later. I get all the way through to where it is detecting hardware, and my screen goes black again. Crap. Reboot, Suse notices that the installation didn’t finish, picks up where it left off, and the gently proceeds to do the same thing.
At this point, I figure there is some kind of conflict with my video, so I reboot, go into the BIOS and enable the motherboards on-board video, poweroff the system and take the 8800 out. The onboard video is an NVIDIA 6150, so it’s nothing to write home to mom about, but it will get the job done. I boot back up, and the Suse installer magically finishes for me. I can now get the system to boot up into OpenSuse.
Since my onboard video is supported by the same NVIDIA drivers that the 8800 needs, I head on over to their site and download the latest drivers, and get ready to install. Well, I couldn’t get them to work. I don’t know if it was just me being dumb, or because this was the first version of the drivers to support the 8800 family, or if Gloria Gaynor did, in fact, survive. I went and got the latest beta drivers. I installed them, rebooted, and everything came up fine. I’m kind of glossing over that I did have to fiddle (who says fiddle?) with my xorg.conf file to get my monitor setup, but that doesn’t really have much bearing on getting the 8800 working. And unlike Ubuntu, I could do that from within the graphical utilities (SaX from within YAST2) if I had wanted to (I didn’t want to).
On to the 3d desktop. I’m a big fan of it. When I first started playing with Compiz last year, I thought it was stupid and pointless. After using it on one of my other PCs and on my SLED10 laptop, I can’t seem to live without it. Everything else seems stale and old now. All I had to do was Go to Computer -> Control Center -> Desktop Effects. It tells me it doesn’t know my device, 3d Acceleration is disabled, and that it doesn’t like me very much. All you have to do here is shift-click the “disabled” right next to 3D Acceleration and it will show as enabled, and then click the Enable Desktop Effects button that lights up at the bottom. Log out, log back in, and you’re in business.
All in all, it was an adventure getting this card working. I’m kind of getting used to having an easier time of getting video working properly, so I think I’m a bit spoiled. In this case, the problem was just that the drivers are so young and the card is so new that I couldn’t use the provided SUSE installation source that NVIDIA provides (that’s always at least a version or two behind the latest driver version). All in all, I’m happy with how it worked out.
