Just tried installing Debian (regular one) on my new laptop that has an Nvidia 970m. Every time I boot up I get that bloody blinking cursor and have to switch to a different screen (ctrl alt f1-6). Any ideas on how to either fix this or get a Debian-based OS with solid Nvidia support?
I'm not 100% sure I follow. First and foremost, did you choose to install Debian with a desktop environment? What does <ctrl+fx> do for you, doesn't this simply enter a tty?
If you are simply looking for another Debian-based distro try Ubuntu?
Did you install and could not boot up or you could not install it at all? Nvidia drivers for Debian (the propitiatory one) should be very solid.
Well since you are going with a mobile NVIDA card you will have to setup bumblebee or primus. I would go with something rolling since the card is so new.
May maybe the rolling version of linux mint it is based on Debian testing so it may have the drivers you need. Make sure you have the newest image when you install it.
Yeah I chose to install with a desktop and it's ctrl+alt+fx for a tty. I was thinking about ubuntu but before I wasted my time installing it I felt I needed to ask if it would work fine with my graphics card.
Installed it all, desktop environemt, eject cd, reboot. Blinking cursor. Tty works.f7 for gdm3 started but nothing appears.
Always get the latest :P but thanks a bunch for your advice!
For Nvidia I'd go with testing or unstable branches. I think the proprietary drivers are in the non-free repo else you can just install linux-headers-whahtever, dkms, build-essential and build them yourself from Nvidia's site.
Just switched to a tty, ran startx, it failed with the message
Fatal server error No screens found
Solved the screen problem! After scouring through files, I started to wonder what my xorg.conf looked like. It was actually pretty invisible. Created it and ran startx and it worked. Currently trying to fix the 0 input I'm getting from keyboard and mouse so yeah..
Update: Mouse is working. Keyboard still wants to piss off