tadi siang, temen saya yang juga guru komputer sewaktu jaman jahiliyah (baca : ra donk komputer), minta tolong lewat YM, buat download-in driver vga untuk opensuse 10.2-nya. Secara bandwith di tempat saya, memang kadang memungkinkan untuk mendownload file-file penting (alhamdulillah), jadi ya asal ada space, saya iya-in aja permintaannya. Selain itu, sebenarnya saya juga bukan ahli linux, coz pegangan tiap harinya adalah Mac OS X, jadi soal linux cuman tau dikit-dikit.

Intinya, driver yang diinginkan rekan saya itu, berbentuk binary .rpm, alasannya supaya mudah instalasinya. karena belom ngecek di situsnya nvidia, saya sih oke oke saja. Langkah pertama saya adalah membuka situs nvidia itu (ya iyalaah..), dan menemukan daftar driver dan spesifikasi yang diinginkan, namun di situ ada catatan khusus untuk distro OpenSuse.

1. openSUSE 10.2-IA32

It is recommended to use YaST for installation of the NVIDIA
driver. There are several reasons for this. First, it's
simple. Second, and this is the most important one, you won't need to
recompile the nvidia kernel module after a kernel update.

Update your Kernel via YOU (YaST Online Update). Use

  YaST -> Software -> Installation Source -> Add

  Protocol: HTTP
  Server Name: : download.nvidia.com
  Directory on Server: /opensuse/10.2

to add the NVIDIA ftp server as additional installation source.
Now use

  YaST -> Software -> Software Management

to install the NVIDIA driver. Select the following packages:

  x11-video-nvidia
  nvidia-gfx-kmp-"kernel-flavor"

"kernel-flavor" depends on your installed kernel. Check with
"uname -r" for installed default/bigsmp kernel. Use "sax2 -r"
for X.Org configuration.

People who aren't afraid of recompiling the nvidia kernel module or
even reinstalling the nvidia driver each time the kernel has been
updated and want or need to use the latest and greatest nvidia driver
can use the following steps 1-3. The others should use the
instructions above using YaST and skip the steps below.

1) Kernel sources must be installed and configured. Usually this means
installing the 'kernel-source', 'make' and 'gcc' packages with YaST2.

2) Use the nvidia installer for 1.0-9755.

 sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-9755-pkg1.run -q

3) Configure X.Org with

 sax2 -r -m 0=nvidia (0 is a digit, not a letter!)

NOTE: There is no need to try to enable 3D support. It's already
      enabled, when the nvidia driver is running.

IMPORTANT: You need to recompile and install the nvidia kernel module
           after each kernel update.

 sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-9755-pkg1.run -K

Untuk saya dan rekan saya yang masih belum banyak tahu tentang linux, hal ini sedikit bikin ruwet. Pengennya yang praktis-praktis saja, ya pake .rpm itu. Jadi, kemudian saya gugling, dan menemukan tutorial di situsnya OpenSuse, dari situ saya jadi paham alasan-alasan kenapa koq distro Suseeh (baca:OpenSuse) ini cukup sulit untuk instalasi drivernya, berbeda dengan distro lain semacam Ubuntu yang telah menyertakan driver untuk vga berchipset nvidia di dalamnya, yaitu :

The NVIDIA drivers can’t be integrated into SUSE because of their license.

Fortunately for new users, NVIDIA and SUSE provide a very easy way to install NVIDIA drivers.

Both SUSE 10.0 and 10.1 support the legacy NVIDIA chipsets (TNT, GeForce 256, GeForce 2 GTS, etc…) via the open source “nv” driver, which unfortunately means degraded performance. In order to enable accelerated 3D support on these older cards via the closed source driver from NVIDIA, driver version 1.0-7174 has to be used.

hwekeke, developer OpenSuse menyebut driver bikinan developer linux sebagai open source “nv” driver . Hm..saya jadi paham alasannya. Lantas kemudian, dalam artikel yang sama, juga diberikan dua buah metode untuk instalasi driver pada OpenSuse, yaitu sebagai berikut :

The easy way

The detailed way how to do it is described in the Nvidia Installer HOWTO.

It is very easy:

• openSUSE 10.2:
  • Import the NVIDIA GnuPG key. Type as root in a console: rpm --import 'ftp://download.nvidia.com/opensuse/10.2/repodata/repomd.xml.key'
  • Add the YUM repository ftp://download.nvidia.com/opensuse/10.2/ to the package manager (YAST or ZEN).
  • Install the packages x11-video-nvidia and nvidia-gfx-kmp-default
  • Restart X (Logout and press CTRL-ALT-Backspace).
  • Done.

• SUSE Linux 10.1 and SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10:
  • Add the YUM repository ftp://download.nvidia.com/novell/ to the package manager (YAST or ZEN).
  • Install the packages x11-video-nvidia and nvidia-gfx-kmp-default
  • Restart X (Logout and press CTRL-ALT-Backspace).
  • Done.

You will also get updated packages when NVIDIA publishes them on this site.

Oke kalau begitu, selamat mencoba, resiko ada di tangan Anda sendiri lowh!!hehehe, untuk instalasi driver vga dari ATi, bisa dibaca di sini