Closing the x server

[socialsupernova]

first off I am a complete beginner to linux.
I got fed up with all those blue screens of death so I switched over earlier this week

I have tried fedora, pclinuxos, Ubuntu, and finally with success Kubuntu. supposedly it's my motherboard's faulty, some Jmicron thing.

Anyways I am trying to (among many things) install my video card drivers. I cant figure out how to install anything. I first went to the Nvidia website and downloaded the drivers. I tried following the instructions but cant close this stupid x server. I don't even know what the x server is. anyways I tried to "init 3" in the Konsole and nothing happened. I then tried to boot up the drivers but I still got an error message telling me to close the x server. I tried init 2 and nothing happened. init 1 shut things down but it still didn't solve my problem. So I tried ctrl alt F1, it got me out of the GUI and to a text base login. I worked my way through that but once again still get the same error message. So How in the hell do you close the X server

I tired ENVY but I cant figure out how to install .deb package. I tried apt-get, I have followed every idiot on every message board and I just cant get these dam drivers to work. can someone help me out

Thanks

[dibl]

Re: Closing the x server

Sure. Let's approach it one thing at a time. What JMicron board do you have, what CPU, and what Nvidia card?

[socialsupernova]

Re: Closing the x server

Core 2 Duo E6600
Asus p5w DH Deluxe
EVGA 8800 GTS
Gsklill DDR2 800

I have 1 74 gig raptor formatted for Kubuntu and (2) 250 gig HD's with media on them that I cant mount.

[dibl]

Re: Closing the x server

That's a nice rig! I'm kinda jealous of that Nvidia 8800GTS!



I have a pair of those 74GB Raptors in my wife's Wintel machine -- they've been running in RAID 1 configuration for about 3.5 years now, zero problems (except the semi-annual Winbloze re-installation, of course).

OK, do you have Windows installed somewhere on that rig? And how do you want your Kubuntu to work? If there's any chance that you're going to acquire or create meaningful data on Kubuntu, I'd like to see you have a separate /home partition that won't get nuked if you need to reinstall the OS. So, when you say "formatted for Kubuntu", what do you mean, exactly?

[socialsupernova]

Re: Closing the x server

my goal is to eventually install beryl and make my desktop real pretty, buy a 37' Westinghouse TV and mount it on my wall in my living room. I'm going to use as kinda of HTPC. I have the raptor for OS/programs/etc. I have tons of movies and music (meaningful data) on the other 2 hard drives.

I previously had Vista ultimate (nothing really so ultimate about it). I installed Kubuntu from the live CD and when it asked which disc to install on I'm pretty sure it formatted that disc. Now windows is no where to be found.

On every other distro I tried they never managed to find any hard disk.

[dibl]

Re: Closing the x server

Hah! Well, assuming your life can go on without Windows, I'd partition that Raptor into 3 partitions as follows:

8GB (for "/", flagged as "bootable")
0.5GB (for swap)
the rest of it as /home

I like the GParted Live CD for partitioning, ISO downloaded from here: http://sourceforge.net/project/showf...kage_id=173828

I use the "Alternate Install" Kubuntu CD. You have the choice of the -generic (i386) or the AMD64 64-bit OS, since your E6600 is a dual core CPU. I'll let you decide -- there are a few minor extra issues with the AMD64 kernel, but they're not relevant to your graphics driver.

OK, assuming you had a well-partitioned drive and installed OS, if it were me I would first get myself a functioning GUI by following my own advice as written here

Then, I would download Envy from here. You want the file "envy_0.9.6-0ubuntu2_all.deb" about halfway down the page. Download it to your desktop, then right-click it, choose "Kubuntu Package Menu>Install" and install it. An Envy icon will appear in Kmenu>System and you can run it from there. If the GUI version fails for any reason, get to a text prompt and run

sudo envy -t

and that will run it in text mode.

I hope this gets you going!

[socialsupernova]

Re: Closing the x server

Thank you so much.

I reformatted, partitioned, reinstalled, updated, got envy, installed drivers, mounted HD's.

My only problem is when I restart my resolution gets reset. I looked under system setting>Monitor & Display and it still says I'm using the vesa drivers. Also is there anyway to take nvidia out of my splash?

[dibl]

Re: Closing the x server

Wow -- sounds like a lotta progress there -- congratulations!

Probably "VESA" is a good place to be until you re-install Envy and then the Nvidia driver. So, download Envy from Alberto Milone's site, right-click on the downloaded file and choose "Kubuntu Package Menu>Install" and install it. Then go to your System menu, find the Envy icon, and run it to install the newest Nvidia driver. It should take care of the little kubuki dance of stopping your X server, installing the driver and supporting files, and restarting X.

When you're logged back in with your Nvidia driver running, post again and we'll go through how to change your default screen resolution.

[socialsupernova]

Re: Closing the x server

Ok, I'm all caught up. I've installed the drivers and get the Nvidia logo right before I log in. I see I now have Settings>Nvidia Settings. I tried to change my resolution here but it keeps going back to 1024x768 after I reset.