Newbie Installation Question

Hi Everyone,

I am planning to install either SuSE 8.0 or Mandrake 8.2 on a new computer that has no other OS on it. The problem is that the computer uses a GeForce4 video card. SuSE and Mandrake support GeForce2 and GeForce3 'out of the box', but both require the installation of driver from nVidia in order to use GeForce4. Without the driver from nVidia, the GUI will not work.

How do I access the internet without a GUI? I can't imagine using a browser without first having access to a GUI. Is there an obvious solution that escapes a newbie like me?

As an alternative, I was hoping to download the video driver from another computer running Win 2K, copy the driver to a CD (too large for a floppy), copy the driver from the CD to a temp directory on the Linux machine, and then use the RPM command to install the driver on the Linux machine. Is this a practical alternative?

Thanks very much for your help.

I think you are missing something here.

For example, my TNT2 card is not fully supported by SuSE 'out of the box'. However, Suse did install and gave me a GUI

Buy Suse or Mandrake, your choice first.

Then just install it and see what happens.

If your video card isn't supported, the system will just default to VGA and you can fix it later.

Your not going to loose your video.

You will not be blinded.

All the Nvidia drivers do is enable the 3D capabilities of the card. That's it.

Error Log for Thu, 20 Jun 2002 20:28:54 -0400: segfault in module 'Dom Incollingo' - dump details are as follows...

Wouldn't X be able to work with just the stock nv driver supplied? You would be able to have a Graphical desktop, you just wouldn't be able to have any hardware acceleration or higher resolutions until you installed the vendor drivers AFAIK.

Unlike that other OS, Linux is 100% capable at command line. Lynx (or links) can serve as your browser, to which you can go to nvidia's site, download the drivers and then use rpm to install them (after of course reading the instructions on their site).

It would probably be easier just to boot up the Linux system and see whether you can startx using the default nv driver, or else just use lynx and d/l the drivers and install them from command line.

But you should do what you feel more comfortable with.

np, hth, gl

Thanks very much. I'll do as you both suggested.

You could always use command line tools. wvdial or diald or something to connect, then ftp the driver down, or use lynx or something. You will find you have *a lot* of command-line utilities available.