Re: Back to Windows??
On Mon, Feb 19, 2001 at 10:46:54AM -0600, Christopher Wolf wrote:
> At 10:42 PM 2/18/2001 -0800, Rob Helmer wrote:
> >Huh.. not that I'm against writing my own drivers, but I have
> >plenty of brand spankin' new hardware that worked great the
> >first time. My HP Omnibook 4150 ( top of the line when my
> >company bought it a couple months back ) was no problem to
> >get working with Debian. USB, video, audio, PCMCIA, APM..
>
>
> Oh, there IS recent hardware that works. Just not all of it. If you want
> it all to work, your chances are less successful if you pick something
> new. And random Joes writing their own drivers is probably why I actually
> had to grep source code to find that the rtl8139 driver is what I needed
> for my SMC ethernet card -- NOT any of the SMC drivers like every HOWTO and
> other piece of documentation suggests.
(deleted)
I do appreciate the difficulty you've had configuring some
of your hardware, and your need to vent about it.
However, I research the hardware I plan to buy with the software
I plan to run on it in mind. If I am running foobar brand tape drives, I
make sure that the OS I plan on running has drivers for it.
Sorry if this does not help you, if you are having trouble with
hardware vendors that say they support "Linux" and are lying or
only support ancient kernels and attempt to hide that fact, then
I suggest you get a refund on that hardware.
Everyone who writes free software does so for their own reasons; while
I commend user friendliness and try to make my own software friendly
and try to help others ( if they want it ) through patches and so forth,
I would rather have free software over easy software.
Free software can be made to be easier to use, and often is.
Easy proprietary software can be made freer, but often is not.
I am not in the business of selling laptops or PCs to home and/or
business users, if I was I would make sure that my software was
configured correctly out of the box and easy to use.
If you want your user experience to be dead simple, I suggest
either buying from a VAR that uses GNU/Linux ( or other free
software ) or hiring a consultant to do it for you.
That way you can trade your money for someone else's time.
Or, use your time to make the software easier.
Correcting HOWTOs ( like the ones that didn't say what driver
to use for your SMC card ) is a nice, easy way to help out
without requiring any programming knowledge.
Thanks,
--
Rob Helmer
Namodn
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