Brian K. White wrote:
lynn wrote:
On Tuesday 15 December 2009 05:37:47 John Andersen wrote:
On 12/14/2009 8:23 AM, lynn wrote:
Does anyone here use openSUSE on just a single computer? Lynn I'm pretty sure that's not what you intended to ask, hence all the smart ass replies.
Care to try again?
No that's fine. Let them be smart, They've all helped me enough in the past and they all know what I want to ask. I've never seen a laptop or anyones computer at home running Linux. But you've just enlightened me. Thanks. L x
We still don't know what the heck you were asking! Ask a meaningless question and you can only get meaningless answers. John actually tried to be nice and explain the problem and you still didn't help. What is the question?
Ok, by now, not because you said anything clearly, but because of deduction and inference, I guess you are asking about one or all or some combination of personal use, home use, desktop use, and/or maybe stand-alone use (no network). None of which are necessarily a "single computer". It used to be common for a small business to have only a single computer and that was none of personal, home, or desktop, although they were often stand-alone, and it seems like although that is the answer to the question you actually asked, it's not what you were actually interested in. And you are right, despite someone here claiming they've had magic working wifi on every pc they've touched, wifi IS often a problem on Linux. Pretending otherwise doesn't do anyone any good. If they have been lucky and have a well supported chip and are running a well-working desktop that successfully automates the setup for them, well that's nice. But it doesn't mean that there aren't a zillion other cases where it's either impossible or impractical to get wifi working. And 2 minutes of testing doesn't cut it either. I have a Vaio P that wifi technically works on. It was very easy to get up & running. But it's an ath9k chip and the current native driver is buggy and locks up in minutes to seconds. (known issue, not just me or my hardware). There is another older driver, but it's anyones guess how to use the old driver on current ubuntu. I have tried to follow the docs but they're either incomplete or obsolete because they don't work as written. (I have ubuntu on that device. I doubt opensuse is immune from other wifi annoyances of it's own even if it turns out to handle ath9k ok. The argument applies to _linux_. Aside from that you have things like broadcom that were until recently legally prohibited from releasing documentation on their chip, or open source code to drive it, because the chip is capable of doing more than wifi and can be used to receive and transmit in proscribed military and other official radio bands (in the USA anyway). There are always things like that. Same with almost any other hardware. Until linux actually commands major desktop market share, hardware vendors are not going to invest in supporting platforms that most of their customers do not use. It's idiotic to forget that basic law and pretend it doesn't still exist just because some hardware works ok. Using ndiswrapper to run the windows driver is not a good solution or system. It mostly works, but it's garbage that that's the only way many cards can work. If you, regardless of technical proficiency, tried and failed to get wifi working without unusual effort, and you can in other contexts (say, in windows) then that is all the proof that needs to exist to validate the statement that wifi is a problem on linux. It's the very definition. If you want to use linux as a personal desktop, you need to think ahead and research your hardware compatibility before you buy it. Windows is the exception case. Everything made, is expected to run under windows, so on windows, you can just buy any hardware and expect it to work. On linux, unless you are willing to put up with struggle, you need to make sure all the hardware will work on linux before you buy it. Not buy it and then be stuck when the wifi or the backlight or the video card etc... turns out not to work. -- bkw -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org