Installing nVidia's 3D support on Debian
Here are the instructions to install the newest drivers (tested with versions 4363, 4496, 5336 and 6106) from nVidia for XFree86. It is really similar between Woody, Sarge and Sid.
This quite complicated procedure is necessary because no free drivers supporting 3D hardware acceleration exist for nVidia-based graphics cards (every models). nVidia kindly provides the Linux community with a program to ease their installation on every commercial distribution, so non-Debian.
- download the file here [1]
- verify in /proc/version the current kernel version and the version of GCC used to compile it [2]
- make the link /usr/bin/gcc point (temporarily) to the closest GCC version available on your system, preferably the same (install it if needed)
- install the corresponding kernel-headers [3]
- stop the X server
- launch the following command, as root:
# IGNORE_CC_MISMATCH=true sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-6106-pkg1.run -a --kernel-source-path=/usr/src/kernel-headers-2.4.24-3-686or, if you compiled your kernel yourself without using the debian-way to do it, replace kernel-headers-2.4.24-3-686 with the place where the sources are
- add a line with only the word nvidia to /etc/modules [4]
- edit your /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 to use the nvidia driver instead of nv and use the GLX modules adding Load "glx" in the Modules section if necessary
- to use it, reboot (not really necessary) or modprobe nvidia and start back your X server
[1] the file is currently http://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/1.0-6106/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-6106-pkg1.run (to adapt to the current version, of course)
[2] not necessary on Sarge and Sid
[3] ex.: apt-get install kernel-headers-2.4.24-3-686
[4] # echo nvidia >> /etc/modules