jfweber@bellsouth.net mocked me with:
I find this story hillarious, as my experience w/ most all versions of Windows parallel your ( and brother's) experience trying to get Linux to run. I haven't never had a completely correctly running windows of any stripe, not even when using the various "Windows approved" hardware and drivers.
Well, as I explained in another post, *I* had the laptop working fine with SuSE and with my home network and my home ADSL. I'm sure it wasn't perfect, but video worked, sound worked, I pre-configured some icons to mount the Windows partition and open Konqueror on it, the CD and floppy worked, etc., etc.
I just wonder , tho , if putting an OS you aren't a semi guru w/ on a laptop , most of which are using at least *some* proprietery hardware , isn't asking for trouble ? Posibly, if you had teh little thing in your home you would have figured out the solution ( if there is one ) but doning anything like that long distance can be a hassle.
Well, here at work, I have a slightly newer model of the same DELL laptop, with dual-boot WinNT and SuSE. The only problems I have are with the laptop profiles that let the computer send different video to the LCD or to any external monitor (works under Windoze, but I don't know where to begin with Linux, and DELL and SuSE point fingers at each other -- so much for my 90 days of support...). See, from my view, it was like this: 1) I got it working initially, so there couldn't have been any unworkably proprietary components. 2) My impression of the failed re-config effort was that SuSE (particularly YaST and YaST2) was only giving me/us grief BECAUSE it already had a network connection configured and simply did not want to let go of it. I could almost hear YaST snickering "Ve don't give you girly-men a vay to back up and go anoddah vay. Now that you haff a config, ve make you learn Leenuks, ya? Ha, ha, ha, ha!" I'm reminded of the way that SaX (or SaX2) **STILL** destroys a working, default mouse config, and leaves you without a usable mouse in the middle of configuring X... I met that the first time in SuSE five.dot.something, and they must think it's either a *feature* or a good joke, 'cuz I've met it again in every subsequent release including 7.3. Perhaps it's a sneaky way to make me learn some command-line Linux, cuz I now know how to edit the video sections of the X config files without blowing up my monitor... much... /kevin
**So that brother, like my wife, is permanently lost to **Linux. No matter how much Linux improves in future, **he'll never forget how much he learned to HATE it **over the course of three evenings and most of a **Saturday
Now, if only "Uncle" Bill could learn this lesson, and leave those of us alone who simply don't interface well w/ his product , rather than bludgeoning us , or threatening us, or worse, trying to get some government flunky to outlaw us, the whole computing world would be better off. <heavy sigh> For most of the world there will be some OS or other that they will actually like/enjoy or at least be able to use in a way that doesn't threaten equanimity of home and hearth. Witness the Folks on tech tv, that bastion of MS usage , telling people last night on "Call for help" to go get a Macintosh , rather than to attempt to go thru the near future horrors of (dot) net ! ( Call for help seems to be more a beginner's show than , say, ScreenSavers where there are even references to LInux ! ! )
At least there are now mentions on variuos tech news outlets that ,in fact, there are OTHER systems out there. They aren't just for script kiddies, grownups , in fact can and do real work on these systems, and for the most part , one never even NEEDs to know what operating system anyone else is using. ( that's what file filters are for <G>)
-- j
afterthought : You sound reasonable ... time to up my medication.
-- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/support/faq and the archives at http://lists.suse.com