Ken N9VV wrote: > My first encounter with Linux was very disappointing. I could not get > WiFi links to my router to work (making it virtually impossible to > update Ubuntu). Then my PCI card for USB was not recognized. Finally I > could not find a utility that would show me when webpages were updated > (such as WebSiteWatcher for Windoze). I guess I will just have to give > up some favorites in order to achieve some peace of mind :-) > de ken > > Linux is really not that difficult to get to know now. Especially with distros like Ubuntu where real money is being spent to make them easier to use on the desktop. All people need to understand is that Linux is not Windows. A move from Windows to Linux is about the same difficulty as moving from Windows to Apple Mac OS X. Once one finds out where things are, they are both easy to use. WiFi links are still difficult. For example, my laptop wifi just fails most of the time in Windows, but using the Linux madwifi drivers works reliably every time. It very much depends on the Wifi chipset being used. If it is a very popular one, it will work well in Linux, if it is a rare one, drivers might not yet exist or one might have to use the ndiswrapper drivers. A bit of googling should get your Wifi working in Linux. You must have a very old motherboard without a motherboard based USB port already on it. Why do you need the PCI USB card? For installing software on ubuntu, one just runs a program called synaptic from the System->Administration menu. Other Linux distros use similar tools generally called "package managers". One simply gets a list of all software that can be installed on Linux and one simply ticks the ones one wants. No going to web site X and downloading and then installing like in windows. There is just one place for all applications. For special cases where the software is not on the synaptic list, one can use a number of alternative methods to get the software one needs. It would be very easy to get FlexRadio to appear in the synaptic list of applications.
So, in conclusion, when Linux is used on mainstream hardware with mainstream applications, it is very easy to use, but once one tries to use applications that are not so common, some more detailed knowledge of Linux is sometimes required. James _______________________________________________ FlexRadio mailing list [email protected] http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archive Link: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ FlexRadio Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com
