All testing was with an F8 i386 Fedora. If your using any other Fedora,
like FC6 these steps will not work.
Question: How can I tell if my computer is using a nVida video card?
Answer: Check what your computer hardware is. In a root terminal type
lspci and you will have something like this if you have it:
00:05.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation C51G [GeForce
6100] (rev a2)
This is from my F8 computer. If you see no nVidia anywhere then you do
not have a nVidia video card.
Question: How can I get the driver for my nVidia video card?
Answer: This is a two step procedure. We will want to yum install the
driver if possible. If your using a F8 i386 this will work.
Step 1: For sure you have a fedora.repo in your yum repo storage. If you
have never installed another repo then you must get the livna or
freshrpms repo. I used the livna.
If you know you have other repo's in your system with a root
terminal cd /etc/yum.repo.d/ if your using F8. Here is how your
directory might look.
[root@k5di yum.repos.d]# ls
fedora-development.repo fedora-updates.repo livna.repo
Fedora-install-media.repo fedora-updates-testing.repo livna-testing.repo
fedora.repo livna-devel.repo
If your directory does not have any livna.xxx files you need to
continue. If yours looks like mine go to step 2.
To get the livna repo files in an rpm, you need to go to the livna
web page. Do this by putting livna into google. When there click on the
rectangle with your version of Fedora. A window will open up and when
you have the rpm downloaded you can leave the web page.
On your system in a root terminal install the rpm you just
downloaded with # rpm -i filename.rpm and it should load without any
problem.
The freshrpms repo was not done. It has been shown that a /yum.repos.d/
with three or more repos will have trouble. So have only two in yours.
This completes Step 1.
Step 2: In this step we will get the proper files to set your Fedora so
it works with a nVidia VGA controller. The proper files for an F8 i386
are on the livna computer so the easy way is to "yum" them. Use this method:
In a root terminal type yum install kmod-nvidia. You should get 4 rpm
packages. When they are installed reboot your computer and it will come
up with the full features of nVidia video. If your system is a 64 bit or
KDE F8 or some other version Step 2 is difficult and beyond the scope of
this example.
KFL
Karl
