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Package:NVIDIA Linux Display Drivers
NVIDIA Linux Display Drivers
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Introduction
NVIDIA provides proprietary graphics drivers for Linux as binary blobs. The alternative open source driver is x11-drivers/xf86-video-nouveau.
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 learn which driver is suitable for your video card, consult the official page of the NVIDIA complete list of supported GPUs. Mind that choosing the wrong driver may render your system unusable!
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
An alternative is to uvesafb framebuffer, or vesa framebuffer which can be installed in parallel with nvidia-drivers
Installation
Upgrade and/or configure the VIDEO_CARDS flag to nvidia in /etc/portage/make.conf.
root # nano /etc/portage/make.conf VIDEO_CARDS="nvidia"
For older drivers, especially unsupported versions, you may need to enter the details of the lowest numbered driver that will fail your video-card into /etc/portage/package.mask. Example:
/etc/portage/package.mask >=x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers-341.0.0
This will block the installation of the 341.0.0 driver and all later versions, as the video cards used (a GT8400GS in this case) is not supported by those newer drivers. emerge will therefore install the latest previous version, in this case the 340.102 driver.
Installing the driver with the gtk use flags will also provide 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 # usermod -a -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 and there is a /etc/X11/xorg.conf you can run the nvidia-xconfig which will identify and set the video card, amongst other possible configurations, in your xorg.conf.
root # nvidia-xconfig
/etc/X11/xorg.conf Section "Device"
Identifier "nvidia"
Driver "nvidia"
VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation"
BoardName "[Name] [Model]"
Option "RegistryDwords" "EnableBrightnessControl=1"
EndSection
The "EnableBrightnessControl=1" option above will allow laptop backlight brightness to be controlled via hotkey or via GNOME slider. Without this option, it is likely that brightness will not be able to be controlled.
Enabling NVIDIA Support
Include the use flag in nvidia in /etc/portage/make.conf so that applications flags are set correctly.
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