[conspire] (forw) Re: June 25/July 9 MP installfest upgrade RH 7.3 PC to Centos56 continuation

[Rick Moen]

Eddie finally debugged his SCSI chain (which turned out to have a
partially defective hard drive as SCSI ID #0) and got a CentOS 5.6
installation underway during Saturday's CABAL meeting -- only to find
out that his rather ancient Diamond Multimedia S3-based EGA/VGA card
isn't supported by X.org.

----- Forwarded message from wood eddie <ewood111 at yahoo.com> -----

Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2011 17:57:11 -0700 (PDT)
From: wood eddie <ewood111 at yahoo.com>
To: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
Subject: June 25/July 9 MP installfest upgrade RH 7.3 PC to Centos56
	continuation
X-Mailer: YahooMailClassic/14.0.3 YahooMailWebService/0.8.112.307740

Hi Rick:

Thanks again for a 99% success centos install yesterday. My back is
still hurting(doctor shall refer me to physical therapist). Regarding
the video card, found
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/sys/2457735525.html that I plan to buy
one of NVidia GeForce video card. To actually install this,  found
http://wiki.centos.org/HardwareList/Nvidia_Graphics 

I can follow the first few commands, including back up XConfig to
backup, but not sure if I can rebuild kernel.  Hope do not have to do
that.  We'll see.

Thx, Eddie 

----- End forwarded message -----
----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> -----

Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 15:03:45 -0700
From: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
To: wood eddie <ewood111 at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: June 25/July 9 MP installfest upgrade RH 7.3 PC to Centos56
	continuation
Organization: If you lived here, you'd be $HOME already.

Quoting wood eddie (ewood111 at yahoo.com):

> Thanks again for a 99% success centos install yesterday. My back is
> still hurting(doctor shall refer me to physical therapist). Regarding
> the video card, found
> http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/sys/2457735525.html that I plan to buy
> one of NVidia GeForce video card. To actually install this,  found
> http://wiki.centos.org/HardwareList/Nvidia_Graphics 


I have to warn you that NVidia is _the_ chip manufacturer most hostile
to open source.  Consequently, I personally go to some lengths to avoid
acquiring and using under Linux hardware that includes NVidia chips,
particularly the graphics chips, except in cases where a particular
Nvidia chip has been on the market for enough years that it has been
properly reverse-engineered by authors of Linux open source drivers.

(That is, there are open-source video drivers for many Nvidia video
chips, notably the nouveau driver for relatively recent ones.  However, 
open-source coders are obliged to play catch-up for lack of cooperation
from NVidia Corporation.)

The alternative is, as you say (in referring to the centos.org page), to 
download and install NVidia's proprietary video drivers
post-installation, and thereby also load NVidia's proprietary support
modules into your running kernel.  Because NVidia's propretary kernel
code has a past record of severe bugs, because such code is inherently
unable to be audited by anyone outside NVidia Corporation, and because
of other disadvantages of tainting kernelspace with unknown proprietary
code, I try very hard to avoid the need for those drivers -- and the
best way is to not use hardware that needs them.



> I can follow the first few commands, including back up XConfig to
> backup, but not sure if I can rebuild kernel.  Hope do not have to do
> that.  We'll see.

You should not need to compile an entire kernel just to compile and
insert the proprietary kernel module portion of the Nvidia video driver
set.  The instructions ask you to install packages kernel-headers,
kernel-devel, and gcc just so the proprietary NVidia installation
program can build its kernel modules (in a way compatible with your 
running kernel), not to build the entire kernel.



----- End forwarded message -----