Removing Old Video Drivers

[Hero_Shema]

I have a linux redhat 7.3 running KDE on a PNY Gforce4 Ti 4600. When I installed linux, i used the "generic" nvidia drivers that came with it. Later on, I installed the real drivers from nvidia. However, the system is still using the old drivers. I have read the documentation about XF86CONFIG file and it only tell you how to modify it to work with a certain driver if you have more than one driver installed. But, if I delete the entries for the old drivers from the XF86CONFIG file, would that delete the old "generic" drivers? If not, what is the way to do it?

[Hayl]

Your Device section for the nvidia card should look like this (or close to it). Just make sure that the Driver "nvidia" line matches mine and don't change anything else) for now.

Section "Device"
Identifier "nVidia Geforce 3"
Driver "nvidia"
Option "NoLogo" "On"
Option "HWCursor" "On"
Option "CursorShadow" "On"
EndSection

what does yours look like?

also - you need to comment out 2 other lines in the XF86Config-4 file.

# Load "GLcore"
# Load "dri"

[Hero_Shema]

Thank you for replying so fast to my message Cybr099. Below is the actual content of my xfree86 config file. Apparently, it's not using the new drivers. It stills defaults to the vesa drivers. I could change the entries as you suggested so that it uses the new nvidia drivers that I installed. However, that still doesn't answer my question: how do you completely remove the old video drivers from the system? How do you completely get rid of the binaries of the old "vesa/generic nvidia" drivers?



# File generated by anaconda.

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Anaconda Configured"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

Section "Files"

# The location of the RGB database. Note, this is the name of the
# file minus the extension (like ".txt" or ".db"). There is normally
# no need to change the default.

RgbPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb"

# Multiple FontPath entries are allowed (they are concatenated together)
# By default, Red Hat 6.0 and later now use a font server independent of
# the X server to render fonts.

FontPath "unix/:7100"

EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "GLcore"
Load "dbe"
Load "extmod"
Load "fbdevhw"
Load "dri"
Load "glx"
Load "record"
Load "freetype"
Load "type1"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "keyboard"

# Option "AutoRepeat" "500 5"

# when using XQUEUE, comment out the above line, and uncomment the
# following line
# Option "Protocol" "Xqueue"

# Specify which keyboard LEDs can be user-controlled (eg, with xset(1))
# Option "Xleds" "1 2 3"

# To disable the XKEYBOARD extension, uncomment XkbDisable.
# Option "XkbDisable"

# To customise the XKB settings to suit your keyboard, modify the
# lines below (which are the defaults). For example, for a non-U.S.
# keyboard, you will probably want to use:
# Option "XkbModel" "pc102"
# If you have a US Microsoft Natural keyboard, you can use:
# Option "XkbModel" "microsoft"
#
# Then to change the language, change the Layout setting.
# For example, a german layout can be obtained with:
# Option "XkbLayout" "de"
# or:
# Option "XkbLayout" "de"
# Option "XkbVariant" "nodeadkeys"
#
# If you'd like to switch the positions of your capslock and
# control keys, use:
# Option "XkbOptions" "ctrl:nocaps"
Option "XkbRules" "xfree86"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"
#Option "XkbVariant" ""
#Option "XkbOptions" ""
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "IMPS/2"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "Monitor Vendor"
ModelName "Monitor Model"
HorizSync 31.5-48.5
VertRefresh 50-70
Option "dpms"

# -- 1400x1050 --
# 1400x1050 @ 60Hz, 65.8 kHz hsync
Modeline "1400x1050" 129 1400 1464 1656 1960
1050 1051 1054 1100 +HSync +VSync

# 1400x1050 @ 70Hz, 76.8 kHz hsync
Modeline "1400x1050" 151 1400 1464 1656 1960
1050 1051 1054 1100 +HSync +VSync

# 1400x1050 @ 75Hz, 82.3 kHz hsync
Modeline "1400x1050" 162 1400 1464 1656 1960
1050 1051 1054 1100 +HSync +VSync

# 1400x1050 @ 85Hz, 93.2 kHz hsync
Modeline "1400x1050" 184 1400 1464 1656 1960
1050 1051 1054 1100 +HSync +VSync

EndSection

Section "Device"
# no known options
Identifier "NVIDIA GeForce 4 (generic)"
Driver "vesa"
VendorName "NVIDIA GeForce 4 (generic)"
BoardName "NVIDIA GeForce 4 (generic)"

#BusID
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "NVIDIA GeForce 4 (generic)"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 16

Subsection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubsection

EndSection

Section "DRI"
Mode 0666
EndSection

[mdwatts]

Why do you really need to get rid of those drivers? It won't hurt to keep them.

You will find that X has drivers for quite a few cards besides the 'nv' driver. Do you need to also delete those?

Don't forget to comment out

Load "GLcore"
Load "dri"

# Load "GLcore"
# Load "dri"

[bwkaz]

You don't get rid of the binaries. There's no need; at a guess, I'd say that including a vesa driver uses about 20-30K of disk space, and the "nv" driver probably uses something similar. When you add the extremely small size of them to the fact that including them means that you can use a GUI without the nVidia drivers (which are not opensource, so some people won't use them), it means no one is going to get rid of them anytime soon.

They're especially useful if anything (in the future) ever goes wrong with your nVidia drivers...

Plus, removing them wouldn't fix your problem anyway. Your problem is (most likely) that you didn't comment the Load "dri" and Load "GLcore" lines (as others have posted already).