Re: Just my opinion
All this reminds me of my printer & Ethernet card woes during the
weekend. I decided that I was tired of using Linux with very limited
multimedia capabilities. It seemed to reinforce the notion my
Windows friends have that Linus is for servers not workstations.
I bought a SoundBlaster PCI128 card and to get that to work I had to
upgrade from 2.0.36 which was working perfectly for months to 2.2.10.
I downloaded the sources and compiled the kernel. I rebooted and
everything seemed to work fine, but I noticed that eth0 kept on
complaining. After connecting my laptop to the hub I realized that
the Ethernet card in the Linux system was unhappy. Not long
afterwards I saw that I couldn't print either.
The Ethernet card problem was easily solved. A reboot to Windows
showed that Windows had somehow told it to use the wrong I/O address,
even though PnP is turned off. The printer was more tricky. It
worked fine under Windows. After messing around with cables
documentation and stuff I decided to strace the daemon. I saw it try
to talk to lp1 instead of lp0. I looked at /etc/printcap and
realized that I had lp1 in there. I read some more and saw that the
lp implementation has been changed quite a bit from the 2.0 to 2.2.
If I had lp0 in /etc/printcap none of this would have happened.
What's my point - getting a Linux system to work perfectly requires
patience and a lot of RTFM. This is unlike Windows where some (but
not all) things will work with minimal user interaction. But the
time I have spent making Linux work always pays off as it continues
working with no problems. Till I touch it again ...
Now I am going home to figure out why IP forwarding has stopped
working with 2.2.
jmb
>The whole point is that things can work just fine. It does take a little
>patience and there's lots to learn.
>
>When it comes to documentation there is alot available and not just
>online. The Debian Users Guide is a must and there are many other books
>available too. Also, the Debain user help is great. People from this list
>have spent much time helping me out with little snags here and there.
>When you have troubles just ask. That is what this list is for.
>
>>>My printer works fine. My modem works fine. The documentation has
>>>always been right on and the installation is a breeze.
>>>
>>Doug-- Run out and buy a Lotto ticket. Lady luck has the hots for
>>you! :-) --- Max
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