Re: Change in plans (was: Re: Another possible device (was: Re: OT: Questions about (buying and) using a laptop docking station))

[rhkramer@gmail.com]

On Sunday, March 29, 2020 08:50:11 PM David Christensen wrote:
> On 2020-03-28 17:19, rhkramer@gmail.com wrote:
> > To clarifly / amplify -- I don't think it is going to be worth the
> > trouble to try to make it (the Wavlink) work.
> 
> Well, that's no fun.  :-(

;-)

> I have found that it is often difficult to determine if some hardware
> accessory is going to work on some computer with Debian by RTFM and STFW
> alone.  Ultimate, you have to "walk the walk", install it, and see what
> happens.  Sometimes it just works OOTB.  Other times, you need to do
> some trouble-shooting.  In the latter case, dmesg and a good search
> engine get the job done.  If not, this mailing list is a good fall-back.
>   If you can find an error message and identify which package is
> generating it, you can file a bug report.

At the moment, I just feel too old to bother with that. ;-( 

And, as I mention below, I don't expect to have many meetings in the near 
future that would require undocking my machine (from my KVM setup).

> Have you identified a make and model laptop and a make and model docking
> station that are known to work with your chosen release of Debian?

No.  I use Wheezy in my everyday driver, but that won't work for the 
programming I want to do -- it needs something like GCC 7.<something>, so I 
installed Buster on the laptop which does have GCC 8.

For now, I'll just use the Inspiron without a docking station -- I don't 
expect to have many (in person) meetings available to get help with my program 
at this point in time.

When things change, I may look for an inexpensive (possibly used) laptop with 
a USB C port, which I think should give me a good chance at getting a docking 
station to work.

Thanks for your interest -- have a good day, and stay healthy!