Nvidia "Vanta" Video Card and Ubuntu Linux

Summary: This is a short description of what I did to get an Nvidia driver working with an IBM PC running Ubuntu Linux. It describes what you might need to do in the case you have an older Nvidia video setup.

Update 2007-11: Using Ubuntu linux, I had the experience of the 3D Nvidia driver working and not working. It worked if I followed some special instructions in the past. Currently, as of November 2007, the graphics driver is available and works automagically through System...Administration...Restricted Graphics Manager. So, if you can use Ubuntu linux, this is now a no-brainer.

Past Notes

Note: I did not have any problems with getting the Nvidia driver to work when this machine ran Ubuntu linux 5.04 "Hoary Hedgehog"(?). I followed the instructions for an old link that is dead. Here is the link for version 7.04: Nvidia at ubuntuguide.org.

So you should try the official site first (hey, what do I know?), but I tried to go through the instructions twice, and it seemed to accept the commands. Typically in UNIX, no news is good news, but the drivers were not installed and I didn't get any error message. If you don't see a "successfully modified your xserver" message, then you didn't. Modifying the xorg.conf file manually, I actually got a "blue screen of death" type of thing because I hosed the xserver so bad. You NEED to do that backup step in the instructions!

If you get no video output at all: If you're new to linux, this kind of result could be cause for panic of sorts, as you cannot get to anything, even a kind of "safe mode". Don't worry, there are 6 "terminals" just waiting for you just about any time you run a linux distribution. Press Ctrl+Alt+F1 (or F2, F3,...) and you will get a command prompt in a blank screen. With Ubuntu, log in as a user that has super-user priveleges and then copy the backup file to where it used to be:

myroot@myhost # sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf_backup-name   /etc/X11/xorg.conf [X in X11 is capital]
myroot@myhost # sudo shutdown -r now

This will reboot your system with the old xorg.conf file. You can use the "-h" flag with shutdown if you've had enough and need a break. That will halt the system instead of rebooting it. Life will be good again.

What finally worked: I ended up installing the Nvidia Legacy Package with Synaptic and then went back and followed the same instructions. Then I got the "success" message. In the process of writing this, I found a much more complete treatment of the subject at the Ubuntu Forums (so complete I didn't read it all). It turns out the Nvidia "Vanta" model is listed at the bottom in the notes section. It was NOT listed by name in the little blurb in the Synaptic description at the time I wrote this. Planet Penguin rides again.

Lastly, sometimes people stumble into my web site looking for related stuff, so it might be of interest to you to know where to get a BIOS update and how to get to the BIOS of this PC Model. There is a list of many Netvista BIOS and driver updates at IBM / Lenovo. To get to the BIOS, use the F1 key at boot.