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Re: [LUG] Mandriva One wifi

 

>> I've been using xp for years now, and apart from it's increasing
>> flakiness and susceptibility to viruses, and of course that it's
>> distributed by a megalomaniac corporate entity with the moral fibre of
>> a cuckoo, I know how to make it work.  Generally by plugging things in
>> and turning it on, occasionally sticking a driver disk into a drive.
>
> Do you *really* know how to make it work?  I don't know your background
> so I cannot comment on you personally, but I do know that Windows is
> actually a helluva lot more complex than many people give it credit for
> (frequently unnecessarily complex, but complex none the less) and there
> are a helluva lot of people who think they know how to make it work.

I grew up on 8 bit machine code, cut my industry teeth on AS400's and
have about 23 years in IT altogether now.  I'm still no expert on the
inner mechanisms of windows systems having spent a lot of my time in
front end design for media, but I'm not often beaten when people say
"my windows is insane".  A rootkit beat me hands down a few years back
though, and even examining hive data, editing the registry (via
back|track on a usb key) and deleting the virus manually didn't get
rid of it.  It was back within a minute of booting.

>> Case in point: I just gave Fedora a shot.  Live CD works fine,
>> installed and the mouse doesn't work.  Rebooted to the live CD, mouse
>> works fine, went back to install, now it doesn't.  Doesn't exactly
>> instill confidence does it?  Still things get better all the time and
>> Linux goes from strength to strength.  Perhaps it's the little touches
>> like not having to arse around to get a bog standard usb mouse working
>> that will make the difference rather than the next killer filesystem
>> though.
>
> The question is: do you lay the blame for this at Linux's feet, at
> Fedora/RedHat's feet or at the manufacturer of the hardware.  I can't
> tell you how much it cheeses me off to hear people claiming that
> Windows supports more hardware because 'it just works' when frequently
> it doesn't bloody work unless you install the drivers that the
> manufacturer supplied.

You're quite right, manufacturers are the key to success in Linux.
Unfortunately they don't seem that interested in providing drivers for
'nix systems.  We need more users to convince them it's a worthwhile
investment, and it's the politics of open source perhaps that will
attract more.

> Fair enough, a 'standard' USB mouse should most
> likely not cause problems for most recent systems.

Indeed.

> Do not be under the misguided impression that it is just Linux that
> suffers from "it just stopped working" problems, and it is not always
> evident what has caused the issue.  Case point - at a previous
> employment, on of my bosses had a MacBook Air.  Now this, he claimed,
> should work with any and all wireless network because "it was designed
> for wireless... it's really thin and light" (I know... I know).  It
> would seem, however, that the version of Mac OS X that was running on
> his MacBook had a known issue... if the name of the computer is too
> long, it will sporadically disconnect from both WEP and WPA secured
> wireless networks.  Now this guy's name was fairly long, and OS X (by
> default) names your computer along the lines of "XXXX's MacBook Air".

Of course I'm not, I've seen my fair share of weirdness and found
solutions (or people that can) for them - again I was talking about
*my* ability to make a difference to the problem I was having, and as
I didn't have a clue where to even start looking, I thought I'd better
find another solution (reaching for the cd burner).  I did try poking
about with a stick in the ndiswrapper area, but it all looked like it
was doing the right thing to my inexperienced eye.

I'm guilty of making a frustrated and flippant comment about distro
fatigue I guess, which has resulted in a swift (and deserved) telling
off which I accept.

Thin and light.... :D

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