Today is another day of finding that I have expended quite a bit of effort that could have been spared if I knew more about the apt package management system of Debian. The current XFree86 version woes I am seeing where one package for 4.3.0 pulls in several older 4.2.1 packages could have all been averted were I not using the documentation that recommends the use of dselect for package management. So, as it turns out, RTM isn’t always the answer. The excerpt from one of my posts to the Debian PowerPC list fleshes it out:
From http://lists.debian.org/debian-powerpc/2003/debian-powerpc-200311/msg00678.html:
Thanks for this information. Man, I wish I had seen this earlier. I went ahead and installed xserver-xfree86-dri-trunk and all its dependencies suggested by dselect, and I have been trying to get the drm-trunk-module-src stuff to compile. After seeing the post from Jens that his PBG4 17 did not use an nVidia card, I went to the Apple site and confirmed that the current 17 units use an ATI card again. WTF? Did they just decide to pop nVidia into the mix on a whim with the first batch? How lucky can a guy be?
In light of the fact that I seem to have the North Korea of video cards, what would you (and anyone else) recommend in terms of trying to get XFree86 working on a PowerBook G4 17″ 1GHz? eBay and another machine? Man, I hope not. Thanks in advance for your assistance. I am reading up on X Windows to try and learn more so that I won’t be such a drain to the list.
And folks want to debate Linux being ready for the desktop…