Hardware Driver writer(s)

[Karl F. Larsen]

        There is a software called System-Administration-Hardware 
Drivers that are very useful if you have a video hardware that has high 
definition drivers written for Ubuntu. I looked and cannot find out who 
wrote this software but I would like to direct these few words to 
him/them/her.

        My computer has a nVidia made video hardware. Ubuntu has a low 
definition nVidia video driver they ship to everyone. Since my computer 
needs a better definition I am very hurt with the provided 600X600.

        Most that can will load Ubuntu with a LiveCD. This is very good 
because it allows you to see what your getting before you load it. Then 
you install it and reboot. It comes up from your hard drive with the 
600x600 resolution and you can see things but not well.

        After 5 minutes you see a red arrow saying you have some Updates 
to load. Also you see the Hardware Drivers and if you click on that 
first, it comes up and offers you 3 written by nVidia software packages 
called 83,173 and 177. No idea what these numbers stand for but the page 
suggests you try 173. So I do and something is wrong with the page. It 
puts up a long error message telling me what software it needs to use 
and can't because the software package is too old. It says to please 
upgrade all these things before using Hardware Drivers.

        For success you need to load the 331 Updates for Ubuntu 8.10 
before you try to fix the resolution. This takes about 4 hours with my 
slow DSL Internet. Now you need to know  that you can call up Hardware 
Drivers at any time. So click on the software and it is there again and 
you ask for 177. It starts to download the software but the Progress 
Window shows zero. I can see that something is being sent to me over the 
Internet but the small Progress window showed nothing happening.

        Then the Progress window disappears your on your own. I first 
tried clicking the Install button. This appeared to do nothing. But 
something must have happened because the 177 software was installed. On 
a reboot it comes up just a tiny line at the top of the screen. Here you 
use Ctrl-Alt-F1 and drop to a simple level. There you login and go to 
/etc/X11/ and edit xlog.conf by erasing it. Then you reboot and it comes 
up again with the 600X600 resolution.

        Repeat all in the above with the 173 software. Then the only one 
left is 83 and you try that. For some reason the Progress Window worked 
and the software was installed and started. Now my resolution is 
1800x1200 and looks great.

        To the writers of Hardware Drivers, your software is a god-send 
to those Ubuntu users with video problems. The software needs to be 
written to use the older and newer software in the LiveCD so your 
software works with the un-updated software. There needs to be a way to 
provide the user with which version of the video software to download. 
For example my computer uses a nVidia 6300 series hardware. There needs 
to be somewhere this information can be found.


Karl
 

 

-- 

	Karl F. Larsen, AKA K5DI
	Linux User
	#450462   http://counter.li.org.
   PGP 4208 4D6E 595F 22B9 FF1C  ECB6 4A3C 2C54 FE23 53A7