Installing nvidia 320M (Sony VAIO CW) on Linux

As usual, new laptop means having some trouble with nvidia-linux graphics. 

Here's a howto, which will allow you to install nvidia drivers for nvidia geforce 320M (attention: you need to have windows installed!). This may be a little tricky because there are no official nvidia drivers released for 320M yet.

I'd recommend to start from a fresh instalation (without graphics) of a debian sid netinstall.

1st. Installing a minimum X server (if you don't have one) and fluxbox

# aptitude install --without-recommends xinit xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse xfonts-base xfonts-100dpi ttf-mscorefonts-installer x11-utils x11-server-utils xterm fluxbox

2nd. Installing nvidia drivers:

# aptitude install module-assistant nvidia-kernel-common build-essential

# m-a clean nvidia-kernel-source

# m-a prepare

# aptitude install --without-recommends nvidia-kernel-source

# m-a a-i nvidia-kernel-source

3rd. Installing glx libraries

# aptitude install nvidia-glx nvidia-settings nxidia-xconfig

4th. Execute nvidia-xconfig (this will create a file in /etc/X11/ named XF86Config)

5th. Restart with Windows and download softMCCS to get the EDID file of your nvidia card.

Download and install softMCCS, which you can get here: http://www.entechtaiwan.com/files/softmccs.exe.

Find your EDID file and save it to a flash drive.

Restart with Linux.

6th. Copy your EDID file and add it to the XF86Config

Mount the flash drive and copy the edid file in /etc/X11 (in my case my edid file is edid.bin)

# mount -t vfat /dev/sdX /media/usb (replace X for the place where the flash drive is)

# cp /media/usb/edid.bin /etc/X11/

# nano /etc/X11/XF86Config

---add at the last line of section Device0 or Device:

Option "ConnectedMonitor" "DFP-0"

Option "CustomEDID" "DFP-0:/etc/X11/edid.bin"

7th. Start X

# startx 

+ info: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1393940&page=3

+ info: http://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers

Hope it helps!