Ubuntu upgrades always, always, always fuck up the same things: network connections and graphics drivers.  Without fail, if you upgrade, your wireless connection won't work and any closed-source video card drivers you need will get ill.  8.10 Intrepid Ibex is no exception.

I figured out how to get my wireless connection back, but the NVidia drivers are still a mystery.  I don't care about free software idealism, I care that my shit works.  I'm willing to jump through minor hoops to make it work, like Ubuntu's "restricted drivers" lecture, but now that doesn't even work:

intrepid-fucked.png

Why is this such a pain in the balls?  I press the activate button and nothing happens. AWESOME. Just because I'm used to wasting hours fixing things like this doesn't mean I enjoy it.

NVidia has 70-ish percent market share of all GPUs.  If your shit doesn't work out of the box on 70% of the graphics cards out there, who has failed?

[Update, the next day]:  I found the fix.  Navigate to System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager.  From there, go to Settings > Repositories.  In the "Ubuntu Software" tab, check the "Proprietary device drivers" box.  Or edit /etc/apt/sources.list if you want to show your chest hair.

I'm glad to see that passive-aggressive Debian superiority is alive and well.