Re: Nvidia cards
Kevin Ross wrote:
> > From: Patrick Wiseman [mailto:pwiseman@gmail.com]
> > Sent: Wednesday, August 26, 2009 3:49 PM
> >
> > On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 6:38 PM, Boyd Stephen Smith
> > Jr.<bss@iguanasuicide.net> wrote:
> > > On Wednesday 26 August 2009 16:52:06 Jeff H. wrote:
> > >> Been thinking of switching to Debian. Does it support Nvidia laptop
> > cards?
> > >
> > > The "nv" X11 driver is in the Offical Free-Software-Only Debian
> > package
> > > repository. I think the "nouveau" X11 driver is also being packaged
> > by a DD
> > > but is not in, or scheduled to be in any release of Debian.
> > >
> > > The "nvidia" X11 driver and the kernel module of the same name are
> > part of the
> > > non-free repository. These packages are second-class citizens; their
> > closed-
> > > source nature makes it impossible to resolve non-packaging issues
> > within
> > > Debian.
> > >
> > > Packages in Official Stable Debian do not get upgraded to new version
> > from
> > > upstream, so it will not include the latest release from NVidia. In
> > addition,
> > > the kernel module is not always kept in sync with the latest kernel,
> > so you
> > > may need to compile that yourself. There are helper scripts and
> > source
> > > packages available.
> >
> > While this used to be the case, I think it is no longer so (although
> > I'm on testing, not stable). There is now a package for the nividia
> > kernel and module which keeps everything in sync; I have not had to
> > recompile the kernel to catch up with the nvidia module in a very long
> > time. And it works very nicely.
> >
> > Patrick
>
> Only the legacy 173.xx kernel module is in non-free, even in Sid. If you
> want the new 185.xx series, like for VDPAU for hardware-accelerated video
> playback, you still need to do it the hard way, which still isn't very hard.
What is the 'hard way'?
--
J
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