Bug#749264: No nvidia-driver working

[Vincent Cheng]

Ok, I think the discussion has derailed quite a bit from the original
bug report...

Karsten, I can sympathize with you, but to address your concern that
the packages are "broken" and that we should be doing better, I'd say
that the current nvidia packages in Debian are doing the utmost
possible to make installing of the proprietary nvidia drivers as
painless as possible (much of it thanks to Andreas, of course). Let me
explain what we already have:

- current long term / stable releases and supported legacy branches
all packaged up in Debian
- nvidia-detect, to help users pick the right set of packages to
install if they don't already know the status of upstream support for
their GPU
- integration with both DKMS and module-assistant, as well as
pre-built nvidia kernel modules (built from
src:nvidia-graphics-modules), in the nvidia packages so that
installation is painless
- nvidia-xconfig (which is upstream's tool to create nvidia-compatible
xorg.conf files), as well as debconf prompts during installation
(provided in nvidia-support) that tell you in no uncertain terms how
to create nvidia-compatible xorg.conf files
- a fairly complex alternatives system that makes sure the appropriate
vendor libGL is symlinked and used (so that e.g. users with hybrid
GPUs don't end up using the wrong libGL implementation, which is often
the result for nvidia optimus / bumblebee users that directly use
nvidia's installer).

Given the constraints (i.e. the fact that the proprietary nvidia
drivers are non-free, can't be installed by default, and how X is
configured), I honestly don't know how/where you expect Debian to do
better. The packages work (at least, for me, and likely for many other
users, given the high popcon count and relatively low number of bugs),
and we (as in the pkg-nvidia team...well, mostly Andreas) have done
our best to make the entire process as painless as possible. I mean,
sure, there could be a bug somewhere that's caused by the packages,
but I'm not seeing it.

Regards,
Vincent