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