Kevin Ross wrote: 

> > 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.

What is the 'hard way'?

-- 
J


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