On Sunday 17 November 2002 08:47 am, you wrote: > Yesterday, [EMAIL PROTECTED] mused: > > With this kind of trouble, I can see why Linux hasn't made it into the > > mainstream (as far as the desktop market goes). > > People always say this when they have a problem. First, you need to
I've had more than "a" problem. I'm not a big fan of Windows but at least you can get it to install even if it doesn't have drivers for all of the hardware (I was able to get the drivers after the install or shortly therafter). In contrast, I can't get ML 9 to install on my server box - the box locks up when I press enter to begin the install. It could be a hardware problem but it's a real hassle having to remove the cover and start unplugging cards every time I do an OS upgrade. I've had trouble with installing 7.2/8.1/8.2. I don't remember my trouble with 7.2 but 8.1/8.2 gave me a kernel panic after install because I had a SCSI HD and an IDE HD. I had to boot off a floppy and modify LILO with hex addresses for bios settings for sda and hda. Let's face reality, the average person isn't going to want to spend a day, let alone weeks or even a month, to try to figure out why his/her hardware doesn't work and they're definitely not going to mess with an OS that locks up their computer when it freezes when they press enter to start an install. I installed ML 9 on my laptop and I get occassional freezes (this began happening after the install), also. The Mandrake website had a fix listed (append="noacpi") and I'm trying that now. So far so good. But, I'm still having problems with the wireless card losing it's config and I have to execute iwconfig <parameters> to get it working again. And the surprising thing is that the Netgear MA401 is suppose to be supported (it's listed in /etc/pcmcia/config.opts). You see, the list goes on and on. > for you. They wouldn't even consider releasing the product without > windows drivers - usually multiple versions of windows. That's no surprise when you consider the M$ market share. > on > linux, you've GOT to plan ahead. Make sure you've got not only > comptatible hardware, but that you understand COMPLETELY what's soldered > in your case. That goes for any OS. But, the nice thing about Windows is that if it doesn't have the drivers with the OS install package, the drivers are probably on the CD that came with the hardware or it's available for d/l from the vendor (which you probably should d/l before you start the install). Unfortunately, I don't know everything. I'd pay for tech support but there have been many times when I knew more than the tech support people. So, I'd rather wait for an answer in a listserver or just replace my hardware with something that does work. But, even though an HCL indicates that a device is 100% compatible, I've found that it isn't always so. My HP 660 and 692 are suppose to be 100% compatible but I can't make either one print reliably on Linux even though I installed hpijs 1.3 on my server box (which is currenlty running ML 8.1). As I've stated before, Linux has a long way to go before it becomes part of the mainstream desktop community. I must say that I'm impressed with all the improvements with Linux since the time I used Slackware 3.4. But, I'm going to "grin and bear it" for a little while longer.
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