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Re: Simplify installation of non-free? (was: Debian on the Desktop - plans for Lenny?)



On 09/08/07, Don Armstrong <don@debian.org> wrote:
The objection is making it a priority over supporting free drivers or
diverting people working on supporting vendors who provide DFSG free
drivers by making it a distribution wide priority.

The free drivers are perfectly well supported as they are, and are excellently maintained by a vast number of talented people from many projects. The non-free ones are god-awful as a simple result of them being closed source, and their installation and use can be calamatous for many, and hence they require special coddling, methinks.... I am not in favour of favouring anything over free software - if it were up to me, I'd just buy one of Intel's excellent and proper-game-capable GPUs (which obviously I can't, because they don't make any) - but once we have got over the fairly simple hurdle of enforced freedom the issue just turns into a question of how to make non-free drivers less nightmarish to install.

Since you appear to be interested in it quite a bit, you'd be well served by making it your priority.

I'm grossly underqualied in that respect, I fear. I can outline precisely what needs to be done to make nvidia-glx, for example, bearable[1] (and it does not involve a specialised GUI, god forbid) but am in no position at all to do so :(

--
Ben Goodger

B.F. Goodger, Age 16½

[1] metapackage "nvidia-graphics-nonfree" or similar to not conflict with the similarly named source package, to depend on nvidia-glx and the current nvidia-kernel-{uname -r} and other appropriate packages, and a moderately intelligent post-install script to parse /etc/X11/xorg.conf for the appropriate settings and flag suspicious lines, with references to appropriate wiki/man pages... eventually, this should become an "aptitude install nvidia-graphics-nonfree" situation, without manual xorg.conf fiddling, and without bludgeoning the entire system Automatix-style (may require many weeks of tedious regexen, but it would IMO be worth it to Do Things Properly, as is the Debian way.)

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