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Etch is the only Debian distribution currently supported by Envy, however many users keep asking me how to use Envy on Debian Testing (Lenny) or Unstable (Sid). If you want to try Envy on Debian testing or unstable at your very own risk you can follow these steps:

NOTE: you will have to put the word “sid” instead of “lenny” if you use Debian unstable

type:
sudo nano -w /usr/share/envy/instun/classes.py

go to line 324 so as to see the following line:
elif self.details['osname'] == 'cassandra':#SUPPORT FOR LINUX MINT CASSANDRA
self.details['osname'] = 'feisty'#this will make it act like
feisty

replace ‘cassandra’ with ‘lenny’ and ‘feisty’ with ‘etch’ so as to see something like the following (please, edit the file manually so as not to break Python’s indentation):
elif self.details['osname'] == 'lenny':#SUPPORT FOR LINUX MINT CASSANDRA
self.details['osname'] = 'etch'#this will make it act like feisty

Then press CTRL+X to exit (save the file)

Envy will no longer complain about the fact that your OS is not supported however it may crash for other reasons.

NOTE: WordPress doesn’t seem to keep Python’s indentation :-/

Here is the changelog:
* Fixed: GeForce 7025, 7050 were not automatically detected

You can get Envy here as usual.

Envy 0.9.7-0ubuntu5 fixes a problem with a function of the textual interface of Envy (“Clean the Installation of any Nvidia driver “) which is required only in the case described in point “B” of the instructions.

I have noticed that some of the problems that users are facing are caused by the fact that when they installed Envy, its dependencies were not installed. This can happen if you’re not using Gdebi (e.g. if you use Kubuntu or dpkg -i envy*) (NOTE: I’m not blaming anyone for this). For this reason I have introduced a dependency check that will make sure that all the dependencies are installed when you launch Envy (it will also attempt to install them if required) and will make Envy exit if the missing dependencies cannot be installed.

Here is the Changelog:
* Fixed: the Nvidia clean function (textual installer only) failed because the
nvdistinctionset was called before knowing the os and because of a missing
reference to the Shutilities class
* Fixed: duplicate dependency in debian/control
* Changed: removed aptitude from the dependencies
* Changed: if the dependencies of Envy are missing and cannot be installed Envy will
exit

You can get Envy here as usual.

P.S. Thanks for your feedback. It’s what makes Envy rock 😉

Envy 0.9.7-0ubuntu4 fixes a bug which affected only the owners of Nvidia cards supported only by the legacy driver 7xxx.

You can get Envy here as usual.

Envy 0.9.7-0ubuntu3 is now available.

I have fixed the problem with the new packaging scripts. It depended on the fact that Ubuntu’s standard kernels have different name patters with respect to vanilla kernels.

For example, if I type `uname -r`, the command returns the name of my kernel (which I compiled) i.e. 2.6.22.1 . The same command will return a different name if you’re using one of Ubuntu’s stock kernels.

For example if you use Ubuntu’s latest generic kernel, `uname -r` will return “2.6.20-16-generic”.

“2.6.20” is the kernel version
“16” is the ABI version
“generic” is a kind of “tag” (as “lowlatency”, “386”, etc.)

NOTE: Envy doesn’t work (and has never worked) with Xen kernels.

Certain parts of the new packaging scripts needed only the kernel version + the ABI version (the tag would make the build fail) and it took only few lines of code to fix the problem in Envy.

Please, remember to remove your previous release of Envy before you install this new release:
sudo apt-get --purge remove envy

and should the system complain about it (it shouldn’t), just type:
sudo rm -R /usr/share/envy

Should you have problems with this new release of Envy you can follow these instructions

P.S. Thanks for all your feedback and support. It really counts, keeps me motivated and helps me improve Envy.

NOTE: THESE STEPS ARE NO LONGER NECESSARY SINCE ENVY SUPPORTS GUTSY NOW

I have received many requests from users who would like to use Envy on Gutsy at their own risk.

I haven’t tested Envy on Gutsy yet and currently I don’t support it in any way (I’ll support Gutsy when it’s released as stable).

If you want to use Envy on Gutsy, even if it could potentially break your system, you will only have to follow these steps:

type:
sudo nano -w /usr/share/envy/instun/classes.py

get to line 324 which will look like the following:
elif self.details['osname'] == 'cassandra':#SUPPORT FOR LINUX MINT CASSANDRA

and replace the word ‘cassandra’ with ‘gutsy’ so that it looks like the following line:
elif self.details['osname'] == 'gutsy':#SUPPORT FOR LINUX MINT CASSANDRA

Save and exit by pressing CTRL+X

Then launch Envy

envy_0.9.7-0ubuntu2 switches back to the old packaging style (the other improvements are still there).

Here’s the Changelog:
* Changed: temporarily disabled the new packaging style
* Changed: the new dependencies are no longer installed with the ATI driver

You can get Envy here as usual.

Please, remember to remove your previous release of Envy before you install this new release:
sudo apt-get --purge remove envy

and should the system complain about it (it shouldn’t), just type:
sudo rm -R /usr/share/envy

Sorry for the inconvenience.

EDIT: If direct rendering is broken
i.e. if the command “glxinfo | grep direct” doesn’t return “yes”, type:
sudo rm /usr/lib/xorg/modules/libglx.so
and restart the Xserver

Just a note on my previous blog post about the release of Envy 0.9.7:

If this new release of Envy doesn’t work for you (but the previous releases did) you can follow these instructions to both restore your previous settings and send me a report of what happened.

First of all, Envy makes a backup of your xorg.conf therefore you might want to restore it by following these steps:

Boot in Recovery Mode (select it from the GRUB menu)

type:

cd /etc/X11/

ls

you’ll see xorg.conf and other backup files (e.g. xorg.conf_backup_200703022015)

replace xorg.conf with a backup:

cp name_of_your_backup_file xorg.conf

then reboot by typing:

reboot

You should be back to your previous configuration. If not, just type:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

and set the driver to “vesa”. Press Enter whenever you don’t know the answer to the questions you’ll be asked.

At this point you can send me a copy of your /var/log/envy-installer.log so that I can see what went wrong or just copy the file to your home folder so that you can send it to me later (please, do it before uninstalling Envy).

Then you might want to remove envy in order to install the previous release (0.9.6) (provided that it worked better for you):
sudo apt-get --purge remove envy

wget -c http://albertomilone.com/ubuntu/nvidia/scripts/envy_0.9.6-0ubuntu2_all.deb

sudo dpkg -i envy_0.9.6*.deb

Then launch envy.

Good night from Italy.

Envy 0.9.7 is now available!

Let me comment the changelog:

* Changed: adopted Ubuntu Feisty's packaging style and names and scripts for improved
compatibility in case of system upgrades (only for Feisty).

Envy uses a customised version of Ubuntu Feisty’s scripts to build the packages only if the OS is Feisty, otherwise the old scripts are used.

Hacking Ubuntu’s packaging scripts wasn’t so much fun but I really wanted to provide Envy with better compatibility with Ubuntu Feisty in case of system upgrades to Ubuntu Gutsy.
If you use Feisty you will notice the “new” packaging names:
nvidia-glx-new – the latest driver
nvidia-glx – the 96xx legacy driver
nvidia-glx-legacy – the 7xxx legacy driver

Unfortunately this new (and hopefully more compatible) packaging method comes at a price since it requires more dependencies (make sure you have a broadband Internet connection).

* Changed: Nvidia's -dev packages are now installed by default (only on Feisty).
The new packaging method makes it possible to install the nvidia-glx-dev package which some of you requested in the past.

* Changed: Envy is now aware of which packages are installed and decides what to do
accordingly

* Changed: Envy is now aware of which desktop manager is being used and tries to shut it
down (only in the textual installer) instead of trying to shutdown both gdm
and kdm blindly

* Changed: the error output is shown only when necessary otherwise it is hidden

These three changes refer to quite a few brand new code I have written for Envy. Thanks to the work I put into Envy in these days, Envy is now aware of which packages are installed and does no longer try to install or remove a package if such package is already installed (in the first case) or is not installed (in the second case).

Envy is also aware of what desktop manager you’re using (provided that it’s either gdm or kdm) and will stop it and restart it accordingly (only in the textual installer).

Athing which I disliked was the fact that Envy showed the output of the error (just warnings) of certain commands and led many users into thinking that something went wrong in the installation process (which was not the case). Now I can control the output of commands as I like.

* Fixed: the xorg configuration dialogbox did not hide if "no" was chosen
* Fixed: no /usr/lib/libGL.so was created
* Added: ATI driver 8.39.4
* Removed: ATI driver 8.38.7

I guess these lines comment themselves.

Please, remember to remove your previous release of Envy before you install this new release:
sudo apt-get --purge remove envy

and should the system complain about it (it shouldn’t), just type:
sudo rm -R /usr/share/envy

I must admit that I really enjoyed writing the new code and I hope you enjoy using this new release of Envy.

You can get Envy here as usual.

P.S. I’m in love with Python 😉
P.P.S. I’ll blog about how to use Envy on Gutsy (at your very own risk) later

Envy 0.9.6-0ubuntu2 is now available. This is mainly a bugfix release.

Here is the changelog:

* Changed: libGL.so* is removed with dpkg-divert
* Changed: the textual installer asks whether to restart the computer (instead of
asking to restart the Xserver)
* Added: option to restart the computer in the textual installer


Please, remember to remove your previous release of Envy before you install this new release:
sudo apt-get --purge remove envy

You can get Envy here as usual.

P.S. No Gutsy support until Gutsy is released.