[CentOS] Switch to Nvidia from ATI

Wed Oct 18 17:54:41 UTC 2006
Alfred von Campe <alfred at 110.net>

On Oct 18, 2006, at 12:49, Jay Leafey wrote:

> For anything that does not require 3D, tho, the nv driver seems to  
> work just fine.

Well, we don't use 3D, but we ended up using the nvidia driver so we  
could drive the LCD monitor at its native resolution and frequency  
(1600x1200 @ 60Hz).  I first tried using the onboard video chip  
(Intel 9XX) on our workstations, but it couldn't drive 1600x1200 at  
the right frequency.  I then purchased some inexpensive nVidia  
GeForce 6200 cards, but I had to install the nVidia driver for them  
to work properly at 1600x1200 using the DVI connector (I forgot  
exactly what the problem was).  But installing the nVidia driver  
solved all the problems.

The only issue is that I have to re-install the driver whenever there  
is a new kernel.  I haven't dug deep enough to figure out how to  
install the driver in a newly installed but not yet running kernel.   
I usually just manually change the runlevel to 3 at boot time,  
install the driver, and then switch to runlevel 5.  But that requires  
physical access to each workstation.  Since there is a new kernel  
waiting to be installed by yum at the moment, maybe I will take the  
time to figure out how to do this now.  I did manage to hijack the  
firstboot mechanism, so that after I kickstart a system it  
automatically installs the driver before going to runlevel 5.

Alfred