Because there has been much confusion about loading and using Nvidia graphics cards drivers, I've written this How-To for installing them into Puppy directly from Nvidia's own official installer.
To test your present system, please open a terminal type in the command:
Code: Select all
glxgears
1.) If you see a graphic display of a pair of gears turning, please wait a few moments and you will soon see a frame rate posted in the terminal window. If the frame rate is up above 1000 FPS or so, it is likely that your card is working properly with an already-present NVIDIA driver.
2.) If your frame rate is much lower (say 300 fps), and/or the movement seems jerky then it's likely you have an older non-OEM Nvidia native Linux driver (like nv) or your computer is using graphics hardware emulation.
3.) If you don't get the graphic gears display at all and the terminal doesn't understand the glxgears command, then you don't have OpenGL aboard. True Nvidia OEM installed drivers include OpenGl support, but not necessarily a full OpenGL installation. You can try the command glxinfo in a terminal to see if you have OpenGl aboard. If you don't, you can load the xorg DRI .pet via the Puppy Package Manager to install OpenGL. Then you should be able to run glxgears.
In cases 2 and 3 above you may want to install Nvidia proprietary drivers. Some of these are available as .pets, however there seems to be a high rate of failure reported for these on the Puppy forum. The likely reason is that there are many different kernel versions of Puppy, many different Nvidia cards, and some choices that have to be made when compiling a driver to a particular system. A pet doesn't allow you any options and isn't custom compiled for your system. When you install nvidia drivers using Nvidia's own installer, it asks you a few questions and then creates a driver compiled specifically for your kernel, graphics board, and system.
If you would like to install drivers for your board using Nvidia's own installer that's what this How-to is for.
(Note: sorry to say, this how-to applies to frugal install, and removable media based systems with a personal savefile, not "full" HD installs. I use a frugal install, so maybe someone else who uses full installs can translate this how-to for others using that method. The main differences will be in loading the devx and and kernel source -- frugal installs use .sfs files for those).
Okay, ready to go? Here it is, with as much detail as I can come up with. Print these instructions out, because you won't be able to see them onscreen once you start working in the Nvidia installer.
Preliminary preparations
Before starting, please:
1.) Go to the Nvidia website and download the appropriate Linux driver for your card here:
http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?
Be sure to specify Linux32bit (or Linux 64bit, depending on your system) and your exact card type.
2.) After downloading the Nvidia Installer be sure to put it in the /root directory -- if it isn't there already. This will make it easy to find when you are working in the terminal. It will be named something like:
NVIDIA-Linux-x86-96.43.13-pkg1.run
The numbers will probably be different, but it will look like that in general. Make a note of this filename on paper, with exact capitals lowercase and spelling for use later when you are using the terminal.
3.) You should know what version of Puppy Linux you are using, and also what kernel version you are using for the next step. You will need to download two files. They are the devx file, and the kernel source file for your version. Devx files are located here:
ftp://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/dist ... uppylinux/
Kernel source files are located here:
http://puppylinux.com/sources/
As an example, let's say I have a Puppy 4.3.1 with the new Linux kernel (also known as the standard or 2.6.30.5 kernel)
From Ibiblio I go to the 431 directory and find:
devx_431.sfs.
From puppylinux.com I go to the kernel 2.6.30.5 directory and find:
kernel_src-2.6.30.5-patched.sfs4.sfs
I download both of these into /mnt/home. That's where .sfs files always go if I want to use them.
4.) Go to Menu>System>Bootmanager and click on the button to load sfs files. The two files you just downloaded should be there, so select them for loading next time you boot. Close out of Boot Manager.
5.)Now remove any Nvidia driver .pets you may have installed. Do this using the Menu>Setup> Puppy Package Manager.
6.) Reboot, and open Boot Manager to make sure the two files you specified are still listed in the right pane -- that means they were loaded properly. If not, have someone help you on the forum to make sure they get loaded. Sometimes it takes changing a checkbox setting to get them loaded, or you may be trying to load too many sfs files for your version of Puppy. You may have to temporarily remove something else.
Okay, let's do it
1.) Go to menu>shutdown>exit to prompt. You will be in terminal mode now
2.) Type
Code: Select all
ls
3.) Type the exact name of the NVIDIA installer file, preceeded by a ./ (a dot and forward slash) into the terminal. You can use the left and right arrow keys to move around and edit the letters if you need to. Don't use the mouse, it doesn't work with terminal editing.
My file example above would look like this:
Code: Select all
./NVIDIA-Linux-x86-96.43.13-pkg1.run
If it doesn't, you probably don't have the spelling exactly right. To see the proper spelling you can enter ls again. Then, to edit what you wrote last time, just hit an up arrow, and it will appear again. Then you can edit it to correct the spelling, and try <enter> again..
5.) Once the installer starts up, follow all of the instructions and suggestions it makes. It will at some point give a message that it can't find a suitable driver pre-made for your kernel, and will ask to compile a new one. Yes, that's what you want. It will also ask to rewrite your xorg.conf file. That's fine, too. Basically do what it asks.
6.) When done, type reboot, and start up Puppy again. Run the glxgears program in the terminal, and hopefully it will now run faster for you.
Note: if you still don't have OpenGL aboard (no glxgears), and you decide to now load the xorg DRI .pet to install it, you will unfortunately overwrite some of the Nvidia OpenGL driver files you just created. You would then need to reinstall the Nvidia driver again. So the order of installation must be xorg DRI first, then Nvidia driver over that, not the other way around
7.) If everything is okay, you can open Boot Manager and remove the devx and kernel source files. They aren't needed anymore -- the installer just uses them to compile your custom driver. If you want, you can also delete or move the NVIDIA installer file out of /root. I like to keep a copy, however, in case I ever have to reinstall the Nvidia driver.
Hope this helps..