[pkg-nvidia-devel] Bug#446106: nvidia-glx fails to install

[Peder Chr. Nørgaard]

On Wednesday 10 October 2007, Sven Joachim wrote:

>
> Can you please try aptitude instead of apt-get?  Aptitude has an
> interactive resolver that can try several solutions and generally
> gives more information than apt-get.
>
> Thanks,
>        Sven

Sven, that was a really good piece of advice.  aptitude indicated that the 
problem was a conflict with package libgl1-mesa-swx11.  I could not remove 
that package without killing xorg&kde.  But I could install libgl1-mesa-glx - 
that removed libgl1-mesa-swx11 and a few other libraries while evidently 
satisfying the necessary dependencies.  After that, installing nvidia-glx 
worked.

So we (the fraction of the Debian community using non-free nvidia code) really 
have two problems:

1) that in this case - which I think will happen to everyone trying to install 
nvidia-glx on an october 2007 "sid" debian - installing nvidia-glx is 
non-trivial exercise.  This could be seen as a bug - at least a documentation 
bug - for nvidia-graphics-driver. The bug is pretty new - I did the same 
exercise on a different "sid" debian system in September and did not hit this 
particular wall.

2) that apt is giving a completely useless error message in this situation, a 
message that does not help at all figuring out what the real problem is.  
This could be seen as a bug for apt.

Any suggestions as on how to proceed?  I don't have a problem any longer - but 
a lot of other people might.

best regards
-- 
Peder Chr. Nørgaard     e-mail: pcn at pogt.dk
Gefionsvej 19           spejder-e-mail: hathi at gallerne.dk
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