Re: Confused: nvidia on AMD64???
On Thu, Dec 22, 2005 at 06:44:21PM -0600, Michael Langley wrote:
> Hey, to each his own. I was just stating my personal preference but I do encourage others to do the same. If you know how to use a few simple tools like ls and ln you shouldn't have any problems at all with the driver package from nvidia's site. I never have.
I have also seen it make a lovely mess that was very hard to clean up
and involved reinstalling many packages in order to restore the missing
files. And you have to manually go put libraries in place on amd64
systems since nvidia tries to put them in the wrong directories (since
it assumes the redhat layout is universal).
> I do find it sad, however, that so many people who use debian don't know how to do anything without help from the distro. The last time I was in the IRC channel half of the people there didn't even know how to get kernel source from kernel.org and were entirely dependant on the distribution for their source.
The majority of users don't need to compile their own kernel, and for
those that do, to do it properly requires quite a bit of knowledge that
just doesn't do much good to most common users. The debian supplied
kernel sources have security updates, which kernel.org does not, they
just release new versions. The debian kernel sources had cramfs initrd
support, which was required for people using initrd kernels on debian
systems unless they completely did their own kernel work, in which case
they probably weren't using initrd anyhow. Now that initramfs has taken
over it is probably somewhat less necesary to use a patched kernel
source.
Don't assume all users have any need to know how to compile a kernel or
any other code for that matter. They want to use their computer, not
have to mess with it. They like it when it just works, and doesn't
crash or have stupid errors.
> It's my opinion that this sort of depenancy would fall under the "windows like" behavior you mentioned previously. Certainly you wouldn't prefer a bunch of sheeple that don't even know how to build thier own kernels or do something as simple as install video drivers for themselves. I hope that's not were the community is headed.
Having one system handle all file installation and removal avoids files
being overwritten, makes sure dependancies are handled consistently and
keeps the system working. You install something, it works. This is
nothing like windows. Being easy to use is not a bad thing. Being
consistent is certainly not a bad thing (too bad windows doesn't have a
consistent universal install tool).
Len Sorensen
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