On Thu, 2005-07-14 at 19:18 +1200, Christopher Sawtell wrote: > On Thu, 14 Jul 2005 18:22, Nick Rout wrote: > > On Thu, 2005-07-14 at 18:12 +1200, Christopher Sawtell wrote: > > > On Thu, 14 Jul 2005 14:28, Volker Kuhlmann wrote: > > > > > 1. With a reasonably new machine, can there be issues with drivers > > > > > being available for all the hardware? > > > > > > > > Yes. Losemodems are an eternal in the proverbial. > > > > > > Indeed, but thankfully less so than in times past. > > > > > > Get this file, decompress it and run the resulting script from a bash > > > command line prompt. > > > > > > http://linmodems.technion.ac.il/packages/scanModem.gz > > > > > > It will tell you everything you need to know about your modem, and what > > > driver to get. There are Linux drivers for all the major chipsets. > > > > an impractical suggestion for someone who is "in the process of buying" > > a computer. > No, I disagree. If a vendor is not prepared to let you boot the machine into > Linux using either a live cd or a floppy and run a program to discover > esxactly what mind of modem is installed, then frankly imho he deserves to > lose the deal.
yes but someone who is obviously a newcomer is unlikely to find the scanModem output to be meaningful anyway. Although scanModem produces a lot of useful output, it unfortunately does so in the most verbose convoluted and confusing manner possible. I agree that it should be possible to try a computer in the shop with a knoppix or similar boot cd that does not affect the hard drive. However 9as I believe Volker has pointed out) most manufacturer/sellers do not hold stock on the shop floor, in fact they do not have stock until you order it. That is the reality of commodity hardware, and you'd hardly want to go back to the days when IBM insisted they had a monopoly on the x86 hardware platform! And as for allowing Joe Blow to download and run software from the internet on a machine he may or may not buy, why would anyone allow that? You'd be pissed if someone tried to sell you a machine where the vendor had allowed someone you and the vendor didn't know to install random software on. > > > > [ ... ] > > > > > > imho, To start with anyway, Debian or preferably the Ubuntu derivative > > > provided you can stand the aesthetics. Kubuntu otherwise. Mepis is good > > > too. Gentoo later if you find want something more flexible. > > > Avoid the .rpm distributions, with the possible exception of SuSe. > > > > your bias is showing. > Indeed. .rpm is the format of choice for 'Corporate America', and being the > bunch of legitimated thieves and vagabonds that they are, I'd suggest rather > strongly that people should avoid them as much as possible. Political > statement may be, but don't for one moment forget that the whole purpose of > the American Cororation is solely to generate wealth for the shareholders. > Everything they do must, by law, have that aim. So if it takes longer to get > it right, than the budget allows. then stuff it, and let the customer find > the bugs for us. Remember the 'Service Packs' so beloved by the 'other side'. > > > there is no substantial problem with rpm, > > providing you put a more clever front end on it (apt, etcetc) > And you do not mind having a severly attenuated choice of applications in the > distribution. WTF has that to do with rpm? rpm is a packaging model, nothing more or less. It does not govern what you put inside the package, any more than bittorrent forces you to pirate movies. I thought you were above that sort of FUD Chris. If you want to criticise commercial distros do so on the basis of something _other_ than their packaging choices. Redhat would be Redhat if it packaged in .deb. Debian would be Debian if they packaged in .rpm > No MP3 player, no Video player except for the completely > unencumbered formats. Qua? You can build an rpm of any package, you just need a spec file. If the spec file says "this build mplayer (which happens to be put in a rpm file) should support win32codecs and decss" then it will. BTW you might like to look at the rpm target to gentoo's ebuild command. > Poor to muddling QA offered by most distributions with > the possible exception of SuSe - get in quick before Novell stuff it up. > > A recent survey, unfortunatly I can no longer remember the reference, > discovered that the Community distributions were of a higher quality than the > Corporate ones. > maybe so, but how does this relate to rpm? > -- > CS > -- Nick Rout <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
