[Glastonbury] Mandrake 9.2 a warning

[Damon Chaplin]

On Mon, 2003-11-10 at 21:15, tim hall wrote:
> Nick,
> 
> On Sunday 09 November 2003 11:14, Nick Irwin wrote:
> > But I ask you was it accidental, or was it in fact PLANNED? Yes thats right
> > my colleagues, after numerous release candidates, they never knew they had
> > a problem with nvidia card support? No in fact i bet they did.
> 
> The nVidia drivers are not 'free' software, the chances are that Mandrakesoft 
> aren't allowed to distribute the drivers with their OS. It's the same with 
> Debian and every other distro I know of. AFAIK this is not a problem unique 
> to Mandrake.

XFree86 does include support for most nvidia cards, in the nv driver.
(I use it with my GeForce2 Go.)

From:
  http://www.mail-archive.com/xfree86@xfree86.org/msg09777.html

  "The "nv" driver that comes with XFree86 didn't support GeForce4
   until XFree86 4.3."

I think Mandrake 9.2 almost certainly has XFree86 4.3, so I'm a bit surprised
it doesn't work.

It may just need tweaking. I've had to tweak my settings to get it working
sometimes. Check the XFree86 logs in /var/log.


> Can't you get them directly from nVidia?

Yes, the other option is to get nvidia's own drivers, which aren't free,
and may be a little awkward to compile/install.

They are probably quicker, but I've had problems with them in the past.

The RPM from MandrakeSoft may be be an RPM of this, which may explain
why it isn't on the CDs.

Damon