Package:NVIDIA Linux Display Drivers

NVIDIA Linux Display Drivers

   Tip

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Introduction

NVIDIA have proprietary graphics drivers for Linux under binary blob. The alternative open source driver is x11-drivers/xf86-video-nouveau.

   Warning

If you installed debian-sources with the binary USE flag you will need to blacklist the nouveau module

   /etc/modprobe.d/nouveau-blacklist.conf

blacklist nouveau
options nouveau modeset=0
alias nouveau off

Preparing to Install

Hardware compatibility and driver versions

Currently, there are five versions of meta NVIDIA Linux drivers, each of which supports a specific group of GPUs. To check the type of driver that is related to your video card, check out the official page of the NVIDIA complete list of supported GPUs.

The required kernel options

[*] Enable loadable module support

[*] MTRR (Memory Type Range Register) support

Device Drivers --->
      Graphics support ---> 
            <*> Support for frame buffer devices --->
                  <> NVIDIA Framebuffer Support
                  <> NVIDIA Riva support

   Tip

An alternative is to uvesafb framebuffer, or vesa framebuffer which can be installed in parallel with nvidia-drivers

Installation

Upgrade and/or configure VIDEO_CARDS variable to nvidia in /etc/portage/make.conf. This will serve to while you are installing the Server X, the correct version of nvidia-drivers to be provided for you.

root # nano /etc/portage/make.conf
VIDEO_CARDS="nvidia"

   Note

Installing to the driver with the option in gtk use flags will make it installed the media-video/nvidia-settings which is a graphical tool for monitoring and various settings for your video card

Emerging the package

root # emerge x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers

When the installation is complete run modprobe nvidia module to read kernel memory.

root # lsmod | grep nvidia

If an update before remove the old module

root # rmmod nvidia
root # modprobe nvidia

The Importance of the Video Group

While many video drivers (those that are part of xorg-x11) do not require users to be part of the video group for hardware acceleration, the NVIDIA drivers definitely do require this. Please make sure that any non-root user is part of the video group. This can be done by using vigr or via the command-line as follows:

root #  useradd -G video myusername

Testing your Video Card

To test your video card run the glxinfo program, which is part of the mesa-progs package. This will check if direct rendering is enabled.

user $ glxinfo | grep direct
  direct rendering: yes

Configuring

Loading at boot

To automate the loading of the module when you boot your system, add nvidia in modules variable.

root # nano /etc/conf.d/modules
modules="nvidia"

Integration with X Server

When your X server is installed find, and there's /etc/X11/xorg.conf you can run the nvidia-xconfig which will set in xorg.conf to identify the video card among other possible configurations.

root # nvidia-xconfig

   /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "nvidia"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BoardName      "[Name] [Model]"
EndSection

Enabling NVIDIA Support

Include the use flag in nvidia in /etc/portage/make.conf so due to applications that make use of this advantage may withdraw.

root # nano /etc/portage/make.conf
USE="nvidia"

Enabling OpenGL/OpenCL

As a requirement, make sure that the Xorg server is not in use during this change. To enable OpenGL and OpenCL.

root # eselect opengl set nvidia
root # eselect opencl set nvidia