Re: Help request installing wi-fi/video-card proprietary drivers [Debian 10 stable]

[David Christensen <dpchrist@holgerdanske.com>]

On 2021-01-20 01:46, uekilaw@libero.it wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm relatively new to Linux (~1 year distro-hopping dual-booting with win10) and a week ago I decided to install Debian 10 stable over Manjaro on my laptop. After the first (unsuccessful) attempt on installing a non-free firmware-included unofficial iso (live), I managed to install the official live iso (kde flavour).
> Then I've followed the Debian wiki in order to install proprietary drivers.
> First my wireless network (Broadcom BCM43142), successfully installed, then I tried with my video card (Nvidia GeForce GTX 850M) and while failing in the first and second methods suggested in the wiki, it also gave me instability for the previously installed wifi drivers.
>
> Due to the several passages and fixes I've tried, I couldn't resume them all in the same post/email, so I would like to ask if this is the right format to ask for help or maybe an IRC contact would be more efficient.
>
> Thank you for being part of this wonderful project,

I have a ~2011 Dell Latitude E6520 laptop with Nvidia Optimus graphics. 
It has always required non-free firmware for the Wi-Fi.  On Debian 9 
with the free nouveau driver, the graphics work fine; both internal and 
external.  I recently beat my head against Debian 10, the free nouveau 
driver, and the non-free nvidia-legacy-390xx-driver; without much 
success [1].


My ideal is a FOSS distribution that works OOTB with as little 
fiddle-faddeling as possible.  I went back to Debian 9.  I suggest that 
you try that.


David


[1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2021/01/msg00035.html