Questions about Ubuntu

Mark Komarinski mkomarinski at wayga.org
Thu Sep 18 10:05:04 EDT 2008


On 09/18/2008 09:48 AM, Bruce Labitt wrote:
> Does Ubuntu support ATI/AMD video cards out of the box?  3D drivers 
> included?
Not having used ATI cards in a long time, I can't answer either.  A good 
guess would tell me that they're at least supported in 2D mode and the 
proprietary drivers for 3D are probably included as well.
>
> Can one use apt with Ubuntu? 
Yes, that's what you use instead of yum/yast.
> Does that get one out of most of dependency hell?  I thought apt was 
> similar (I believe many say even better) to yum and yast.
I have a few problems with apt (though it may be I don't know enough 
about it and haven't found the right docs).  Dependency hell usually 
arrives when you try to install a .deb from Debian Stable (Etch) and it 
has dependencies that can't be matched by Ubuntu.  The package remains 
half-installed and you have to remove it or use apt-get -f install to 
allow apt to clear it for you the best it can.  That usually works by 
just removing the offending package.  Until that's resolved, you can't 
do anything:  no updates, no installing new packages.

A prime example of this is gpsdrive, which has a .deb for Etch and used 
to work on Gibbon, but doesn't work with Heron.  I've tried a number of 
times to get the right combination of packages to allow it to install 
and I can't quite get it.  I think the version for Sid requires newer 
packages than I have, and I'm not smart enough to get the source package 
to compile without something blowing up.

-Mark


More information about the gnhlug-discuss mailing list