Re: FWD: RMS and Debian on his Toshiba
Patrick Ouellette wrote:
>
> Nothing is stopping people from grabbing items from unstable -
> if the new hardware drivers are indeed stable, then the users should
> be "safe" grabbing them from unstable. This is provided that there is
> a .deb in unstable.
>
Fine if it would work, but have you tried installing the pcmcia-cs
from slink on a hamm system? Obviously not because it has dependency
problems on glib that prevent it's installation. Not that I have tried
it but I would not be surprised if there was a similar problem
with the XFree86 servers. This will get even worse if potato uses
glib 2.1
> >
> > My initial thoughts are that there should be a hardware updates
> > directory in the stable version which will include the latest
> > versions of stable hardware drivers. This would mean someone
> > installing Hamm at the moment could install a kernel-2.0.36,
> > a pcmica-cs-3.0.7, X11 servers from XFree86 3.3.3 and whatever
> > the latest GNU version of ghostscript is if it has fixed or
> > had any printer drivers added.
>
> I think this would confuse people. Granted it would be nice to get
> my shiny new computer working with every current driver and
> application from a cd that I got from xyz, that's not realistic.
>
How about getting it working at all. The only way I was able to
get a sucessfull install on a recent Toshiba laptop was because
I had other working laptops which I could be used to download the
updated drivers.
> I hesitate to say this, but even the M$ people have to download
> updated drivers between OS updates.
>
How on earth do they even get to downloading their updated drivers
if they can't get that PC-Card modem working then, because the
CD that have, does not have a suitable driver.
But ignoring the fact that these machines come preinstalled with
Windows 95/98 with all features fully working, the recovery CD's
provided with the machine provide all the drivers necessary to
succesfully reinstall Windows 95/98/NT.
> >
> > Finally if you might say this only applies to Toshiba laptops,
> > remember that Toshiba accounts for around one third of all laptops
> > sold and laptops account for around one third and rising of
> > all computers sold. This means that the current stable release of
> > Debian (Hamm) cannot be installed on around one sixth of all the new
> > PC's sold. This is plainly a disastrous situation.
> >
>
> No, it applies to all hardware. If it is available in stores it is
> obsolete.
This is certainly not the case with Toshiba laptops, for example
the latest greatest Tecra 8000e, has been available for over two
months and is unlikely to be superceed for at least another month,
and will likely still be on sale in June.
> I'm willing to bet that M$ doesn't support most of the new
> features that you claim prevent installing Debian Linux on those
> machines, but the manufacturer of the hardware has written the driver
> (with appropriate guidance and consideration from M$).
That's irrelevant, "Linux" does support all these features, it's
just that Debian does not.
> I don't consider it disastrous, since I don't believe those machines
> are unable to run Debian Linux. I consider it unfortunate that the
> nifty new features of the latest whiz bang hardware are not supported
> by the stable release (but again, M$ doesn't either - try to get USB
> support on WIN95 without purchasing a new PC with OSR2 bundled with
> it - you can't, not even a "beta" version).
>
Well I would disagree, if you can't get your PC-Card slot's working,
and there is no X11 server available, your machine is pretty useless.
Debian Hamm will install, but most people won't be able to get much
useful work done. It really is that bad, Debian Hamm is basically
unuseable on around one sixth of all new PC's sold.
If I get a newby Linux user asking me how to go about installing Linux
on their Toshiba laptop (about half a dozen a day at the moment) I have
to suggest either RedHat or SuSE, as Debian is only an option for the
experenced.
> I'm not saying it is a good situation, because it is not. It is,
> however, the status quo.
It certainly is not, it's a disasterous situation, which despirately
needs changing. At the moment a new user to Linux trying to install
Debian on his Toshiba laptop is going to have a very unpleasent
experience that could well turn him off Linux for the forseable
future.
JAB.
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