installing Nvidia driver and dual monitor

[Stupid]

I am trying to set up dual monitor with a Nvidia Geforce 9600GT video card. Obviously, Fedora 9 does not allow me to do that via GUI - cannot select 'second video card' via 'display" even though it has dual DVI outputs.

by doing some research (why the hell do i need to do that?), i was convinced to install Nvidia driver (NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-173.14.12-pkg2.run), which I dutiful downloaded from Nvidia. When tried to sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-173.14.12-pkg2.run, it gave an error about not having a compiled kernel, then complained about no kernel source.

After I went to download the proper kernel source, kernel-2.6.25-14.fc9.src.rpm, obviously, it wouldn't install.
[root@localhost Download]# rpm -ivh kernel-2.6.25-14.fc9.src.rpm

warning: user mockbuild does not exist - using root
warning: group mockbuild does not exist - using root
########################################### [100%]
warning: user mockbuild does not exist - using root
warning: group mockbuild does not exist - using root


Further research yielded nothing. Could anybody help? This costed me a whole night so far.

[Skunk Worx]

The hell you speak of is due to political things like patent wars, closed source, open source. I suspect the least guilty party is poor old Fedora, as it is open source and mostly patent unemcumbered. Mostly.

Anyhoo, you don't need the kernel .src rpm, probably at the most the packages kernel-headers and kernel-devel (in addition to kernel).

I had heard the only NVIDIA run file that works for F9 is 177.13, a beta driver, but I could be wrong.

After you install it you can run the nvidia-settings to adjust things. I run lots of dual displays at work now using 177.13 and F9 and it seems ok.

Surprised it took you all night Most of what I know I gleaned from searching this forum or Phoronix.

[Stupid]

i cannot install the nvidia stuff without kernel-source. it won't let me.

[Skunk Worx]

I know their message it a little misleading. I just tried it here and it works, I don't have the "kernel sources" installed but I do have the "kernel-devel" package installed.

Try :

# yum install kernel-devel

...and then retry the build/install. It should absolutely work...no "kernel sources" installed. The kernel-devel is a much smaller package at about 5 MB.