On 6/30/06, Andrew Lentvorski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Linux *still* sucks.
Yes. It does. But it sucks less than the other options. Start with Ubuntu ... easy distribution of the gods ... snort. Great choice. I installed it on my Dell Inspiron 6000. Worked like a charm. Tried to install. Lots of errors on device. Check web. Grumble.
Crappy external drive that only works with Windows (and that poorly). Okay, not the fault of Linux. Purchase new enclosure. Installing to a Dell Inspiron 8600. This is about as generic as it gets, folks. It's a smidge old, but everything on it should just work as there has been plenty of time to work the kinks out.
A wee bit of googling led me to the Alps drivers for the touch pad and its buttons. I still can't get the funky media buttons to work, but I think it's pebkac in this case. I'll work on that when I find time.
Start configuring network. Hey, not bad. Connects to my neighbor's AP. Whack. Bad computer. Reconfigure a couple of times until it connects to my AP.
Yeah. That part was pretty slick. Tell it to use the whole drive. Go.
Stop.
Can't recognize and format. What?!?!? It managed to mount the bloody thing. Partition is active.
Ubuntu found my windows partition and offered to have it mounted as /windows. Nice.
Pull the latest updates to get security fixes. Pull in EasyUbuntu primarily to get OpenGL support. Reboot.
I had problems with EasyUbuntu. I removed it.
You know what. I really detest closed source drivers, but I'm almost in favor of ATI here. It's been 4 freakin' *years* people and you *STILL* don't have a stable kernel API for DRM/DRI drivers in Linux. And it can be resolved by copying in an old file. The deity knows which parties are at fault. I hate you all.
This laptop has the ATi Mobility 300 video chip. Took me many many hours to get the binary driver to work. Most likely pebkac again. However, when I did the dist-upgrade from Breezy to Dapper I lost use of the binary driver. Xorg did some st00pid voodoo with the drivers and packaged them individually. Shouldn't matter, but I can no longer play America's Army Online until I fix it. Copy in an old libGL. Resolve a few links. Beat. Whack. Reboot.
Wave a rubber chicken. Start tuxracer. It runs. Sorta. Move on. Great. Download the actual source code I've been trying to compile. ./configure dance and all that. WTF?!?!?!? There's no GCC!
Ubuntu is made for generic desktops. They assume that if you need gcc then you also know how to install it... Just because it's a linux box doesn't mean that its user is going to compile all their stuff. Windows doesn't come with a compiler either. Good luck with RH. -Mike -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
