[Sussex] Debian and the nvidia driver!

[John D.]

On Sunday 20 August 2006 17:11, Steven Dobson wrote:
<snip>
> Well you know me to be a Debian only guy and you told me that Kanotix is
> based on Debian sid.  My AMD64 machine is a Debian Sid system so I
> assumed that I might be able to help some.

As ever Steve, you have. An immense amount!

> > I'm presuming that Kano has done something with his kernel versions,
> > because during my digging around, I found this :-
> > http://www.kanotix.de/FAQ-id_cat-15.html#q109
> >
> > So, I thought, after checking out the kanotix page/website, I noticed
> > that his kernel version number is even higher than the one that I was
> > trying to manage courtesy of synaptic/debian mirrors and decided that I
> > couldn't make any more of a "pigs ear" of this than I already have.
> >
> > Suffice to say that I'm now running this:-
> >
> > john at johnspc:~$ uname -r
> > 2.6.17.9-slh-up-1
> > john at johnspc:~$
>
> In an earlier e-mail the same command returned what looked like a
> standard Debain kernel.

It was, though I didn't realise it. Well I wasn't quite "au fait" with the 
differences

<snip>

> > Now all I have to do, is reset all my desktop icons etc that I had to
> > change to make the system even moderately readable, plus try to work out,
> > why, when I booted into the new kernel version that I had to play "hunt
> > the key" - which I'm presuming is to do with Kano being German and having
> > a different Xkb setting (it was the | symbol that I couldn't find - it
> > was at shft ~).
>
> That sounds like the same Knoppix assumption that if you speak English
> you must be an American with an American keyboard.  Have a look at your
> keyboard localisation settings - in Knoppix there is a icon in the
> bottom right hand corner that show it an allows you to change it too.

Well, I managed to get shot of the US english bit straight away, so "it" was 
fine under GUI, it still wasn't "playing" in CLI - I'm not sure if I've cured 
that yet either - Ha! it's not often that I find use for things like | and ^

> > Should I just stick with this and learn the kanotix way of doing stuff or
> > look into making it properly "debianised" ? I don't know.
> >
> > With your assistance and eventually finding some instructions that work,
> > it's been one hell of a learning curve (again) :-P but I suppose, like
> > British Rail, I'll get there, eventually.
>
> As a "nugget" one advantage of running one of the more popular distro
> would be that help would be easier to come by.  There are a number of
> people who, like me, use Debian.  Colin is about to become a DD so the
> amount of Debian knowledge is pretty good.  For Fedora we have Joh, who
> as a Redhat employee can teach you the one true way of doing all things
> Fedora.
>
> It is my impression, maybe mistakenly, that you tend to jump distros as
> soon as on becomes "to difficult" to do what you're trying to do.  I
> don't like jumping distos becuase you also "throw away the baby with the
> bathwater."  Each time to have to remaster skills that you had already
> mastered on your old distro.  [Yes, I know that most of the skills
> needed to run one Linux distro are the same, but there are differences
> and those differences are important too.]

Not far wrong. I like to have a play, but if things get "sticky" or mores the 
case, Illogical to the "non-IT Professional", impatience sets in rather 
quickly.

Which leads on to my pet hate - the standards of documentation. Not everyone 
is lucky enough to be part of a group like the SLUG - Hell, I should think 
that with the combined knowledged of you, Colin, Geoff, Jon, etc (to name but 
a few) theres enough know-how to fill the British Library (I can do the 
deliveries/cleaning/security :-P).

When I need to ask, we have plenty of people who can answer without having to 
resort to "geek speak", and certainly don't presume huge amounts of prior 
knowledge. The usual documentation sources seem to be produced with good 
intention, but certainly not in a "polished" way. They also seem to 
lack "proof reading" in the non-technical sense i.e. they cover a technical 
subject, but don't have to be written as if aimed solely at the IT pro's.

> In over twenty-five years in IT I concider that I only really became an
> expert in: Pet (1st computer), VMS (as a user at Uni, but a power user),
> SunOS (first job as a developer), AmigaOS (2nd computer),  Solaris
> (developer and I ran it at home) & Debian (all I now run).  So my advice
> is going to be pick a distro you like and stick with it.  So, think back
> over all the distros you've tried and which one worked best for you?
> Which one had the best support?

Hum? In truth, I suppose it'd actually be Gentoo. 

Why? I don't mind the compile time. I can do that overnight. It's about as up 
to date as I need it to be. Plus the management of it is pretty straight 
forward.

My downfall, always seems to come when I need to do something _NOW_ (usually 
something Clare wants me to do). Hence, the need for a working system 
(brought about by not having a Windows install any more) being paramount. So 
it tends to fall on things like Kanotix (which I do prefer to Knoppix, even 
though they are very similar). It's often the only way to repair the system 
so that I can get whateveritis done.

Perhaps it's about time, that I made a boot floppy for this, and then sorted 
myself some additional hard drive space and installed gentoo there - that way 
I'd not find myself without a working system.

Ha!, I can't believe all this has come about, because I wanted to install some 
Gimp extensions, and Kubuntu didn't want to let me!

Ah well.

regards

John D.