Noob playing with Ubuntu 64-bit, and I don't know what I'm doing :(

[Coolone]

So I thought I would see what the hubbub is about Linux, and so far things have been great. The install went without a hitch, and I can do a lot of stuff that I was doing in Windows.

One thing though, is that I'm so used to just double clicking something for it to work, but I cant get the NVidia driver to work, and I dont know how to install it. Their website I think assumes that you know a lot about Linux, because I don't understand them. I went into the desktop folder as root, and it still wouldnt work for me. I think it also doesnt like the fact that gnome is running and wants a 100% text install, but I dont know WTF to do. Can anyone help me?

EDIT: Okay, so it was an issue with some libc thing that I installed now, and I think the driver is fully installed. I cant seem to get to my highest resolution in the desktop, any hints?

 

[jacc1234]

Im glad you got the driver installed. I had the same issue with my monitor resolution. I have a Dell 2007WFP with a max res of 1680X1050 but by default that was not enabled. You have 2 ways to get around this. First you can manually edit your xorg.conf which will have a list of supported resolutions for each color depth setting. The easier way i have found is through nvidia-settings. Go to the terminal and type sudo nvidia-settings. From there click on X Screen Display Configuration. Click on Detect Display and hopefully it will detect your monitor. Check if the resolution you want is available in the Resolution drop-down and select it. Then click on "Save to X Configuration File" then click "Save." After it saves close nvidia-settings and restart x by holding "CTRL+ALT+Backspace" and hopefully your desktop will be at the resolution you desire. If it does not I will help you go through your xorg.conf manually and configure it.

Jacc1234

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

That's all good advice, but I would like to stress that before you start making any changes to your xorg.conf file, you backup the default settings by running a command like this:

cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf_backup

You may need a sudo in front of that -- I can't remember.

The point is that if you royally FUBAR your display settings, you can still boot to the recovery console, and run:

cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf_backup /etc/X11/xorg.conf

followed by:

/etc/init.d/gdm restart

To get your display back.