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On Sunday 16 November 2008 02:24:10 Harry Putnam wrote: |
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> I posted some output in anther thread concerning update world |
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> (Subject: How to fix a hefty (emerge) blocking problem) |
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> |
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> Someone noticed I had too many x11 drivers installed and suggested I |
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> set the /etc/make.conf VIDEO_CARDS variable (which I never have set |
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> before) |
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X.org used to be a huge monolithic program - a holdover from the days before |
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it forked off from XFree86. It built every single driver in the package even |
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though it could only use one at a time. |
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Recently, X.org was improved to be modular, which means you could build only |
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the bits you need. A binary distro like Ubuntu still builds all of them as |
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they have no idea what hardware you have. On Gentoo, you build the thing |
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yourself. the env var VIDEO_CARDS is how you tell Gentoo what you have and it |
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builds only the necessary drivers. All those other packages are drivers you |
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don't use, they are in separate packages so they can be installed separately. |
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Some thing in this life you just ignore and filter out of your vision. Those |
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extra packages is one of those things. |
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-- |
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alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com |
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