JOHN DAVEY wrote:
> Hi, I have Debian 'Lenny' on my Toshiba lappy which is equiped with a
> wireless....thingy. How do I connect wirelessly to my BT home hub? It
> doesn't seem to want to do it.....
Well Home Hub v2 supports Wifi: 802.11b / 802.11g / 802.11n (Supports
WEP, WPA-PSK/WPA2-PSK)
Now what kind of Toshiba laptop? Built-in or added wireless card?
What is the highest protocol in common?
Is the connection encrypted?
What have you tried?
How does it fail?
Recommended reading:
http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
When I first made the choice to install Linux my mum, who I was living with at the time, did me the favour of making some enquiries about it with the IT guy where she works. His advise was,
"that's for real geeks....don't bother".
But the whole model made sense to me, in paticular, the socio-economic implications, so I went ahead, opened my 'Linux for Idiots' book containing an old distro called 'Caldera' and began with the install. Four to five months later I'm still trying to get hold of older, compatable hardware to put in my machine so that the distro actually would work. It's at this point I decide to get some support. Incredably I actually managed to get someone from Caldera on the phone in the U.S. Of course they had no idea what I was on about. I gave in, re-installed Windows, go on-line and look for help there...,
"WHAT! YOU'RE TRYING TO INSTALL CALDERA?! THAT'S ANCIENT, YOU NEED A NEWER DISTRO MATE!"
was the astounded reply....I can't recall the first up to date distro I tried but I'm fairly sure I bought a CD from The Linux Emporium' . I am now equiped with a recent distro and with new found confidence as I have discovered how to get support through local LUG's. That was around 2000. Ever since I have pestered this list with newbie questions.
Now, I have first hand experiance of trying to convert someone to using Linux. I persuaded my stepdad to, instead of paying the extra fror Windows on his net-book, get the one with Linux intalled. After lots of very strong persuading he went for it and the first thing that happened was it wouldn't recognise his dongle so his 'net-book' was just a 'book'. I pointed him to the LUG and to a web page with the solution to his problem but his attitude was,
"I havn't got the time, or the inclination to go through the rigramarole of doing all this when it would work fine with Windows".
He went back to the shop and got his nice Linux notebook made into a Windows notebook....which worked. Now the solution wasn't even that complicated. In fact it was an easy fix but he just didn't want to bother. He just wanted his computer to work.
I myself have come close to giving up on Linux lots of times. possibly because I come from a place of such limited knoweledge that the learning curve is too steep. I didn't have a ZX spectrum, Commadore 64 even an early 486. As I said, I bought my first 700Mhz Athlon computer in 2000 and had had little or no contact with them before that. However I can now build a system from scratch, install a wide range of operating systems and have just enough ability to configure and maintain Linux on a system, I have written a web page in HTML and I have a realitively fair understanding of the internet and it's workings. A friend of mine put me thorugh the A+ exam and I was 2% off a pass without any tutoring....
What I'm trying to say is, compaired to some people I am good with computers but here I'm an idiot. I seem to come up against never ending problems with using Linux and I find that it's often taken for granted that because I like Linux and continue to try to run it I have a certian amount of ability. I do not come here with questions out of lazyness. Unfortunatly it seems I am of real limited ability with the understanding of the system and I have accepted that this will always be the case.
This might be a controversial opinion, I also think that I am not in the minority in thinking this, but, because I don't have the background in using the command line the foundations just aren't there. I guess that those who have this ability might easily forget and fail to understand why people don't just do - apt/get/whatever/
or whatever is the appropriate command but I just don't instinctivly think that way. I am actually fairly frightened of dropping into the command line. I went as far as getting a book an the BASH shell and how to use it but out of context it's much to difficult to take in. I don't have the memory to retain all the commands.
I take your point. It WAS lazy of me to use the word 'thingy' in my question but having read a lot of forum posts with Linux questions people do use vauge language like this. I guess I was playing devils advocate to an extent which takes me back to my origional point. The questions I ask here might not be about the complexities of networking protocols and they might not be that stimulting or challenging but whenever I come up against a problem I know that I am not the only one;
It's not what I wanted or expected from my journy into Linux but I think I am a fair reprosentation of the average computer user. This is what you get if you Google 'average computer user',
I'm really sorry about being negative. I want people to be aware of the evilness of MS as much as everyone else here but I must say that as an 'average computer user' I have to say I do feel alienated sometimes. Even when questions arise here concerning areas in which I feel confident I know for a fact that there will always be someone with a much better understanding so I never seem to be able to give back to the community and this ensures that I retain my status as a newbie even though I have been using Linux for 10 years now. My point is, inspite of this I do feel that I might reprosent all those people who want to make use of Linux but havn't yet joined their LUG or who feel that they wouldn't want to risk sounding stopid by asking that which might not be considered a 'good question' but will enable them to make progress with using their system.
/slight rant
...Cheers, Jon
