Walt S wrote:
> Eric,
> I "upgraded" my Akita from OZ to Angstrom a few weeks ago. What I
> have now is useless. The desktop works OK and the few apps that are
> installed seem to work. WI-FI (a Linksys WCF11) does not work at
> all, and without network connectivity I can't install any other apps.
>
> I have begged for help in this forum several times,
<snippage>
> My main reason for doing the upgrade apart from wanting to remain
> "current" was to get 802.11g functionality. so I went from 802.11b
> only to no WIFI at all :-(
I think you are being a bit harsh with both your criticism of the list,
and the shortcomings of the distribution. I don't have an Akita, but a
Borzoi, and I have an Ambicom wifi card, 802.11b, but I had no trouble
getting all the stuff I needed. The only "special" thing I did was to
start out, once I flashed Angstrom, with a wired network connection
(using a CF/ethernet card, which just worked out of the box). I then
used ipkg to download and install what I needed, and then wifi worked
fine. I have to config it every time I wake the machine up, but that
just means going to the config-network applet and choosing wlan.
As far as usability of the distribution goes, I find that it meets most
of my needs. I came to Angstrom from pdaXrom (and OZ before that). It
is true that pdaXrom has some programs Angstrom lacks, such as wxmaxima
and latex, along with firefox and thunderbird (these are the ones I care
about), but on the other hand the distribution can actually be
installed, and it works, which failed miserably for me when I upgraded
pdaXrom. Also, upgrading with Angstrom is easy, and progress is being
made on software as well as compatibility issues. Certainly there are
good e-mail and browsing options (sylpheed and minimo), and good PIM
options (I use the gpe ones). It has a good spreadsheet (gnumeric) and
word-processing (abiword and lyx). It may be that it is not compatible
with your card, but that would surprise me, since it worked for OZ.
Sometimes answers on these lists are a bit snippish, but what needs to
happen is to get more users providing their own experiences, rather than
depending on the core developers for configuration issues, etc. It can
become annoying to answer the same questions, like "How do I get wifi
running?" as each newbie comes on board; but had I noted your post (it
slipped by me), I should have mentioned how it worked for me, to give a
few suggestions that might help --- not as definitive, but in general
more enthusiastic.
Documentation is always the last thing to get serious attention. It is
not easy to keep it up to date, because both hardware and software are
moving targets, and for the developers time spent on that is time not
spent on making things work better. Without a complete manual, other
users have to step in.
--
David L. Johnson
It doesn't get any easier, you just go faster.
--Greg LeMond
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