[ale] X wants nvidia libraries

[Jim Sculley]

David Tomaschik wrote:
> I don't know how often Mandriva releases new versions, but I can't
> imagine reinstalling a system every few months.  
Once, maybe twice a year.  Security and bugfix updates occur on a 
regular basis and the updater (MandrivaUpdate) that handles that works fine.

> I do have separate
> /home partitions, so those would be preserved, but there's still a lot
> of system configuration in /etc, installing packages, etc.  Good to know
> about Mandriva.
>   

The package upgrading is what makes the Mandriva process ten times 
slower.  Plain old package installing happens quite quickly in comparison.

As for /etc and such, the installer checks you existing /etc/fstab and 
asks you which partitions you want to format.  The minimum requirement 
is that the root partition be formatted.  Everything else can remain as 
is, and this is the way I usually do it. 

If I recall correctly, the package installation will check for modified 
config files in /etc and will not overwrite them.  If you have a 
/etc/foo config file, the installer will create /etc/foo.rpmnew and warn 
you about it.  You can review each in  a 'diff' type window and choose 
to keep the old file or replace it with the new.

Typically, after an install, I have a few missing packages that I have 
to install as I find them, but all in all it goes pretty smoothly.

I have 3 machines running Mandriva, and for the 2008 version I decided 
to give the upgrader another chance.  Never again.  After two days of 
trying to fix what it broke on the first machine, I ended up doing an 
install anyway.  The other two machines were up and running in a matter 
of a few hours.

Jim S.