MUAHAHA! Sometimes I’m so goddamned awesome that I make myself SICK! They fixed the repos so I could get the kernel update, and a kernel update means reinstalling the video driver, because the driver is compiled against the existing kernel, not the new one. There’s never a matching kernel module on nVidia’s site, so I always have to build a module myself. Since I’d never known how the hell I managed to get a driver installed in the first place, it was hard to reproduce after updating a kernel. This time, Geek Girl was at the ready…

Kernel headers? Check! make? Check! gcc? Check! pkg-config? Check! xserver-xorg-dev? Check! No nvidia-glx installed and /etc/init.d/nvidia-glx does not exist. No linux-restricted-modules. Driver install file waiting patiently in /home/lisa, and I know that sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop is the way to make GDM go away so I’m in a “true” terminal. From there it was only a cd to home, then sudo sh and the name of the nVidia install file, then “Enter” my way through the install. Nothing to it, took less than five minutes, which is a VAST improvement over my usual, “break X and spend the next hour or two figuring out what I did to break it and how to fix it”.

I fair OOZE uber-geekiness! Okay, I don’t, but this is the first time I’ve done the video driver and actually understood what I was doing, so it’s still an accomplishment. 😉