Over the last few years, I’ve generally found that my interest in a specific video game rarely lasts longer than the amount of gameplay that is made available through the free demo. The upside of this is that now I don’t pay for games that I end up playing only a couple times. I have not yet extended this discipline to books, so I still buy many books that I don’t read or only read a chapter or two from.
Although I was tempted to immediately buy UT2004 (I loved the UT2003 demo, but lost interest before deciding I needed the whole game), I decided to once again give the demo a try. I got the UT2003 demo to work on XP, but not on Red Hat 8.
After downloading the Linux version of the UT2004 demo through one of the mirror sites and installing it [uncompress the bz2 file, su to root, and run sh ./ ut2004-lnx-demo-3120.run], I got the following error when it tried to start:
Couldn't set video mode: Couldn't find matching GLX visual
Based on the info I found from googling for that phrase, it was pretty obvious the problem was with the NVIDIA drivers. I had not yet updated the drivers that came with Fedora Core 1. I used yum and the rpm.livna.org repository to install a kernel built with the newest version of the NVIDIA drivers. After a quick reboot, I was hard at work fragging aliens. And as an extra bonus, Tux Racer was finally playable.
Update 11/27/2004 - I posted new instructions if you are using FC2.
Update 4/25/04 - In case you are a Fedora Linux user and need more help getting this to work, here are a little more detailed instructions:
- Add the following section to /etc/yum.conf (I normally leave gpgcheck set to 1, but I have sometimes had to turn off digital signature checking specifically to download Livna’s kernel module for the Nvidia drivers)
############### ## Livna.org ## ############### [livna-stable] name=Livna.org - Fedora Compatible Packages (stable) baseurl=http://rpm.livna.org/fedora/$releasever/$basearch/yum/stable gpgcheck=0
FYI, $uname -r returns the release identifier for the kernel you are using. Also, you can use $yum info kernel-module-nvidia* to see all the modules (e.g., kernel-module-nvidia-2.4.22-1.2188.nptl) that are available. If you have a single processor machine, you need one that ends in nptl. If you have a multi-processor box, you want nptlsmp. NPTL = native POSIX thread library and SMP = symmetric multi-processing
June 12th, 2004 at 8:34 am
Did they remove kernel-module-nvidia* from the livna repository? I’m not able to find it. Yum.conf is fine. Thanks.
June 13th, 2004 at 4:51 pm
I don’t think so. I just tried
#yum info kernel-module-nvidia*
and it returned a long list of Nvidia graphics drivers. The livna.org section of my yum.conf looks like
[livna-stable]
name=Livna.org - Fedora Compatible Packages (stable)
baseurl=http://rpm.livna.org/fedora/$releasever/$basearch/yum/stable
gpgcheck=0
July 17th, 2004 at 7:33 pm
I’m trying to do this on a custom Fedora Core 2 kernel. I patched the kernel for firewire support and get
[root@xxx rhn]# yum install kernel-module-nvidia-$(uname -r)
Gathering header information file(s) from server(s)
Server: Fedora Core 2 - i386 - Base
Server: Livna.org - Fedora Compatible Packages (stable)
Server: Fedora Core 2 - i386 - Released Updates
Finding updated packages
Downloading needed headers
Cannot find a package matching kernel-module-nvidia-2.6.5-1.358custom
No actions to take
Do I need to add the modules to my custom kernel source somehow? Thanks.
July 18th, 2004 at 12:32 am
> Do I need to add the modules to my custom kernel source somehow?
I don’t think you will be able to use the pre-built Nvidia kernel modules at Livna, since they are built for a specific version of the kernel. However, if you can find one for the same version of the kernel source that you used, it might work. No guarantees, though. Try:
#yum info kernel-module-nvidia*
and see if you find something like:
kernel-module-nvidia-2.6.5-1.358.nptl
(assuming you have a single x86 processor).
Otherwise, you will probably need to get the drivers directly from Nvidia. If their installer doesn’t recognize your kernel as being compatible with one of their prepared modules, you will need to compile their interface code into your custom kernel. That should be pretty straightforward, since you obviously already know how to compile the kernel.
January 8th, 2005 at 4:11 pm
i would like buy this game from pc world but before i do this i want 2 play a free demo is this possible
January 8th, 2005 at 4:38 pm
> i want 2 play a free demo is this possible
Definitely. Demos are available for Windows, OS X, and Linux.
http://www.unrealtournament.com/ut2004/downloads.php