[CentOS] Nvidia Geforce 5200 graphic card

Thu Aug 17 10:21:22 UTC 2006
Phil Schaffner <P.R.Schaffner at IEEE.org>

On Thu, 2006-08-17 at 09:16 +0100, Philip Wyett wrote:
> If it was a server where uptime was important then use of telinit
> would
> be appropriate. But not many folks install the proprietary nvidia
> driver
> on servers and for workstations or laptops reboots don't really
> matter.
> Describing it as bad practice is ridiculous.

Very nice howto with the exception of the reboot advice.  It is somewhat
short of ridiculous to describe unnecessary reboots as bad practice
IMHO.  Newbies would be well served to see that one of the [many] great
advantages of Linux over Redmond OSs is the absence of the perpetual
reboot cycle.  Rebooting for every change is way too windows-like for my
taste, and I have workstation (and server) machines that regularly go
months without a reboot in the absence of kernel updates.

> 
> In the mail I clearly mentioned telinit could be used but did not
> expand
> on it, just specified I personally did not use it as is my choice.

No problem with your choice - Linux is all about choice - and you
clearly covered the option most of the responders seem to prefer - just
not clearly explained.

One other viable choice IS to use 3rd party repos, which may be easier
for a newbie as well as being consistent with frequent advice to use RPM
packages on an RPM-based system.  I have had very good experience with
ATrpms nVidia kmdl packages; although I'd recommend against using Axel's
packages wholesale for a stable CentOS system.  The yum includepkgs
directive is quite useful here.

> Should I spend more of my time writing all the possible options just
> to
> make some people happy - Not a chance, I've got plenty of other non
> and
> CentOS related work to do! 

I hear you.  Perhaps someone can find time to build on this for a WiKi
article.  Will take a crack at it if I can find the time.  :-)

[other] Phil