I have a Toshiba laptop on which I had installed last year's kubuntu. It
never allowed me to change the screen brightness, and the version of
nvidia driver available didn't either. I decided to upgrade all the
packages. It said: "A package needed by a package cannot be upgraded.
Upgrade cancelled."
Which package? By which package? Who wrote that error message?
So I decided to do a complete distro upgrade.
Half way through, it said: "Problem in doing upgrade. Upgrade cancelled.
Warning: if you do not complete the upgrade, your computer will be
unstable". Only a cancel button on the popup, no continue button.
It was unstable and the machine wouldn't boot. So much for user-friendly.
I loaded PCLinuxOS. No screen brightness controls, sound was off (as if
spoken by a dalek), no wireless.
I wiped it and did a fresh installation of the latest kubuntu. Still no
brightness controls, no sound, no wireless (and these last two worked
with last year's version!).
Okay, wipe again, install the latest debian.
Sound works, wireless works, screen horrible.
Install nvidia proprietary drivers. Screen now okay, a utility is there
to control brightness (although there is still no way to get at the bios
brightness controls directly).
Success with everything, including the commercial drivers - and from
Debian, not Ubuntu, not PCLinuxOS.
And another thing, seeing that I mentioned ubuntu upgrade woes: Earlier
I had upgraded my debian desktop, and forgot to upgrade the kernel when
instructed, and then deleted over 1,000 packages (chosen at random) by
mistake. But I plugged on, upgraded the kernel, reloaded packages, and
turned sarge into etch without a hitch. There's a lot to be said for
boring old debian!
--
Ron House house@xxxxxxxxxx
http://www.sci.usq.edu.au/staff/house
Ethics website: http://www.sci.usq.edu.au/staff/house/goodness
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