What package(s) are needed to install nvidia support ?

Mark Shuttleworth mark at hbd.com
Tue Sep 14 03:55:39 CDT 2004



Fabio Massimo Di Nitto wrote:

>It can and did cause headaches. The nvidia driver is splitted into kernel
>and userland module. First of all loading the kernel module will alter the
>kernel status (and it is known that was giving problems. see LKML for it).
>Second we don't want the machine to crash or start behaving weird due to a
>module that we have no sources and that we cannot fix. The user has to be
>conscious to do it at his own risk.
>  
>
Yes, but we should make it trivial for that to happen. In other words, 
the user should make an informed decision, but not have to know the guts 
of how to implement that decision.

nvidia --enable

  => tells the user this is restricted, not open source, and why that 
may be a bad thing for him
  => offers the user the ability to make the switch, backing up the config
  => tells the user that this can be undone with nvidia --disable

nvidia --disable
  => restores the config which was backed up

This way the user makes an informed decision, and can undo the decision 
if it was wrong. And doesn't have to be an expert either way.

-- 
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http://www.markshuttleworth.com/





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