On 2022-01-18 at 01:47, R. Toby Richards wrote: > Every time that I search for solutions to my wifi drivers, the > solution is to apt-get install a bunch of drivers. Why does nobody > realize that apt'ing anything is a non-solution: How can I apt-get > install <network drivers> if I don't have network drivers? There are > DOZENS of responses to questions about network drivers that say to > apt-get install various packages without any thought to the fact that > nobody can apt without first having network drivers. apt-get can install things from a local source (whether CD/DVD or otherwise), if configured appropriately, so even without networking it may not be a useless recommendation. Also, in some cases people will have e.g. wired network drivers but not wireless ones, so making use of the network access provided by the former to install the latter - to be able to have network access when away from the network cable - can be a viable option. > It's seriously starting to **** me off. I've got computers with > Broadcom wifi. How the heck am I going to fix that by using > networking to download the gosh darn drivers to fix the networking > that I don't have? Of the dozens of "solutions" that I've read about > this, NOBODY ever thinks about how to fix the network driver without > having a network driver. The usual solution (aside from reinstalling with firmware present, etc., as you've addressed to some degree separately) would indeed be... > Do I know how to use sneakernet? Yes. In my young adulthood, email > was dialing into a BBS that would then dial the next closest free > telephone call to another BBS, and so forth until your message from > California got to the East Coast. Days. I remember trucks with huge > spools of punch-cards that were data for the mainframe. ...this. > When I try to use sneakernet to overcome the networking issues then I > get errors from dpkg that it can't install debs because ldconfig and > start-stop-daemon aren't available. I haven't bothered searching for > the debs that provide those things because I cannot use a deb to fix > dpkg because dpkg doesn't function. That sounds like a completely different problem, and probably a far more severe one, which would need to be investigated on its own, and which might well warrant a full reinstall to fix. I would recommend starting with trying to troubleshoot and fix *this* problem, before you worry too much about the other one. -- The Wanderer The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw
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