On Wed, 30 Apr 2008, Eilko wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I just installed Debian 4.0 for an AMD-64 processor. Unfortunately, I cannot
> set the screen resolution to something else than 640x480, on 60Hz.
> My video card is a GeForce 7100 GS; capable of much more than only basic
> vga....
>
> I tried to download a driver from nvidia.com, but then I need to recompile a
> lot of things. libc header files are missing, ect. Just a little bit too
> complicated for a starting linux user
>
Well no, your problem is that you decided you knew what you needed, and
then did a selective install.

Unless someone has an actually good reason, there is no reason to do a
selective install nowadays. Hard drives are so big that the space saved
from a limited install will be next to nothing.

But, a selective install requires that you know what you are doing. Guess
wrong and you end up going through these iterations.

I did a partial install the first time, in late 2000, but then it was a
240meg hard drive. I realized immediately the futility of it all. Ever
since, I've had a large enough hard drive to do a full install, whether
it was that 2gig that I got in mid-2001 specifically to run Linux, or
the 20gig or later 160gig I've upgraded to. Always more space than I
needed.

I've been using only Linux since mid-2001. When I moved to the latest
version of my distribution a couple of months ago, I did a selective
install, and I left out things I thought were irrelevant, we're talking
relatively minor things. Yet it did cause problems, and it took effort
to figure out where the problem lay. If I'd just done a full install,
which requires no effort on the user's part, that problem would not
arise.

When I've installed the nvidia driver, I've not ever had a problem,
it just compiles and there it is. It actually is simple, so long
as you did a full install and everything expected is there.

Michael