228. Setting up Asus (nvidia) GF 210 on Debian Testing

NOTE:  Unless I remove the legacy driver, *DM will not start. Instead I only get a blank screen with a blinking cursor. See below for solution.

Here's how to get ASUS (nvidia) GF210 up and running in debian testing (wheezy)

First edit /etc/modules, and add
blacklist nouveau

You can either reboot at this point or try
sudo rmmod nouveau

To see whether nouveau got unloaded, do
lsmod |grep nouv

If nothing is returned, then you're good.

Make sure that your card got recognised:

lspci

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GT218 [GeForce 210] (rev a2)

I like smxi, so here's how to get the drivers up and running using smxi, which is a fancy shell script.

sudo su
cd /usr/local/bin
wget -Nc smxi.org/smxi.zip
unzip smxi.zip
smxi

The first time you run smxi you have a couple of things to sort out -- lots of little questions to answer. If you don't feel comfortable yet with linux, avoid liquorix since it'll make your debian box deviate more from the standard setup (the liquorix kernel is fine and safe and I've used it in the past before I started rolling my own kernel, but it's more difficult for someone to troubleshoot your system the more it deviates from their own). Other than that most questions aren't that important. I enable non-free immediately after setting up a new box, and while there are sound political reasons for NOT doing it, there are plenty of practical reasons in favour of it.

Anyway, eventually you're done with the setup, and with making sure that your system is up to date. Select Continue to Graphics, then select debian-nvidia

If all goes well you'll get the dkms install of the nvidia driver. You're probably asked whether to generate a new xorg.conf, which you should. You may also get a message about the nvidia driver needing to be added to your xorg.conf.

Once you're done installing the driver, you're asked whether to start your desktop or to quit. While it's fine to start your desktop at this point, why not select quit and check that all went well?

lsmod|grep nvi
nvidia               8028141  0
i2c_core               24002  2 i2c_piix4,nvidia

cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf|grep nvi
        Driver  "nvidia"
        Driver  "nvidia"
        Driver  "nvidia"

Looks fine.

I often have problems with the legacy drivers (blank screen with blinking cursor), so
sudo apt-get purge nvidia-*-legacy-173xx-*

Do
aptitude search 173 
to make sure all the legacy drivers are gone.

Purge if there's still something around.

Framebuffer 
If possible I like to enable framebuffer (it gives you fancier graphics capabilities in terminal mode e.g. browsing with images using w3m). I've had all manner of headaches doing so with the newer nvidia drivers though, so don't be too surprised if it doesn't pan out.

Edit the following line in your /etc/default/grub

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet text vga=0x0318 nomodeset"

To see what code to use, look here.
This method is supposed to be deprecated, but I don't have any experience using vbetool.

As for the other options, only 'text' is important -- it will make you boot into the terminal and you will have to start your (default) desktop by doing startx. IF you want to boot into e.g. gdm3, kdm or another *dm, then DO NOT ADD text.

Reboot. To see whether your framebuffer is active do
ls /etc/fb*

/dev/fb0