> From: Patrick Wiseman [mailto:pwise...@gmail.com] > Sent: Wednesday, August 26, 2009 3:49 PM > > On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 6:38 PM, Boyd Stephen Smith > Jr.<b...@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. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
