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If someone had the same laptop with a dead HDD, they didn't have recovery media and they didn't want to spend $150 on a new OS, mandriva would at least get their laptop functional.

So would a lot of other Distros... The only thing I have against this article is that some information is lacking and/or wrong (see my post on pro software), and it is obviously biased. If someone with reasonable intelligence wanted to see what Linux is or decide on a Distro I would hope they looked at reviews of other Distros, for example Linux Questions.org has a decent review section .

Yes, it's a good idea.

But don't waste time on bugs that only affect legacy hardware.

It would also be a good idea for some effort to be spent on consolidating, corrrecting, and updating the various lists of "Hardware supported by Linux". There are lots of such lists on the web, for example:

• Hardware Howto
• Linux Hardware Support
• LinuxQuestions HCL

- not to mention the distro-specific compatible hardware lists maintained for Redhat, Mandriva,Suse, and others.

We need one correct, maintained list, not dozens of nearly-correct, usually out-of-date lists. And it seems to me that the list should depend only on the kernel version, not on the distro.

If you want freeview going through a pc (the DIY part) then get a freeview pci card or usb box and plug it in. You can use Myth on Linux, or various solutions on Windows XP such MS Media centre, Media Portal, (I was going to add Meedio, but it seems they've been bought out by Yahoo), Snapstreams "Beyond TV".

If you're on linux, then you could use the Hardware compatibility list at LinuxQuestions to help in choosing a card.

There is a nice selection of DVB-T cards available at DVBSHOP in Germany, which I have used, and they are pretty good with quick orders. They also sell Common Interfaces for some of the DVB-T cards so you can add a TopUp TV CAM and smart card and get subscriber stuff.

Ok, so you have to build the box yourself, but that's DIY for ya !

If you can be bothered, here's a list of my media centre related bookmarks -

Bookmarks

media centre

My point _WAS_ that man sucks. It's not a suitable help system for a new user. It's suitable to a computer expert with a lot of time and patience. While your post was informative you implied that man was a wonderful system and that the only problem was that people didn't use it.

What I don't like about the man pages? On each of the Linux systems I've used the man pages are written in such a way that they assume you're a well versed Unix/Linux expert. Which of course is fine if you are (hence my comment that it's fine for a research project). If Linux were a car, the man pages would be like having the service manual to the car, but not the owners manual. Lots of technical jargon and refernces which are essential if you're doing something advanced, but confusing if you're just the end user who wants to get the damn thing working. Would you supply the service manual to a driver and abuse them if they couldn't from that figure out how to work the aircon?

I've got less experience with commercial Unix varieties - most of my uni time was on Solaris - but I found these pages to be just as bad.

Check the man page on man out here:
http://man.linuxquestions.org/index.php?query=man& section=0&type=2

NAME
              man - format and display the on-line manual pages
              manpath - determine user's search path for man pages

SYNOPSIS
              man [-acdfFhkKtwW] [--path] [-m system] [-p string] [-C config_file]
              [-M pathlist] [-P pager] [-S section_list] [section] name ...

So here you have two commands on the same page (man and manpath) and if you were new to Linux and didn't have eperience you'd have no idea that "name" refers to the name of the command you're looking up. The brevity is ludicrous for a newbie. You don't sit the guy in front of this and expect them to work out the help system. You tell them to type man followed by the command they want to search.

Next we see there's no simple example. (There's rarely an EXAMPLES section). How does the user know what options are and aren't needed except with experience and trial and error.

All of this just to lookup how to use the damned help system. God forbid you should try to do something useful.

Try typing the more intuitive equivalent "help" at a Windows CMD prompt:

C:\>help
For more information on a specific command, type HELP command-name
ASSOC Displays or modifies file extension associations.
AT Schedules commands and programs to run on a computer. ...

Well even this could be improved, but notice it's not "name" it's "command-name". that's the parameter. I'd actually include something explicit as a header for command names rather than a listing with no header, or better yet ommit the command listing and add something like "help all" to get a listing of all commands then include a comment to that effect in the brief description.

It's not rocket science. It just isn't sane to expect a non-techy to wade through computer speak just because you're well versed in it and until Linux developers grow up and realise this Linux will stay where it is. Of course /. being /. people just think I'm trolling. That's fine. Bury your head in the sand and watch Linux remain a niche OS. *shrug*

If you do not want to mess around with hardware detection, you could buy a PC with Linux pre-installed. There are many online vendors who will do this (some of them even have well-recognized names, although these are typically more expensive 'workstations': IBM, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, etc.). Hey, it works for Apple!

If you do not want to buy a new computer, then check out a Linux Hardware Compatibility List and search for the driver you need and see what is supported. If you want a good sound card, you could use a Sound Blaster Live!, which is only ~$30 nowadays. Can anyone recommend a better value Linux soundcard?

Hmm I'm not sure. My experience has been _completely_ different. I started using Linux (SuSE) two years ago and hit several snags. I've always had a pleasant experience on linuxquestions.org. Furthermore, when I switched to Ubuntu 8 month ago, I had more problems with it, but the ubuntu forums have been even more helpful than linuxquestions.org with people responding quickly and having all the information that you need. The worst thing that has happened to me on these forums was people not answering my questions, at which point I would either post somewhere else or do more searching online.

If you don't mind me asking, where did you go for support? It sounds to me like you went to /. Well, /. is NOT a support site, it's a tech blog. A tech blog full of people who like to troll and flame people. They're not here to help you, they're here to read tech articles and ridicule other users. Yes, some of us will help you if we can, but most /. users. . . probably not. I'd say coming here for support is almost asking to be ridiculed.

You should go to a Linux help site if you want help with Linux. If you want (good, helpful, useful) Linux support you should go to http://www.linuxquestions.org/. That's where I've been going all these years.

You have a point, but...

If Linux wants more users (or OSS in general) you need to (1) fix the documentation so that it's always up to date to the newest version; and, (2) fix the culture of the dipshits that are out there.

(1) "We" need people like "you" to help fix documentation. If you find an answer to something particularly tricky to find out, consider documenting it somewhere easy to find. (Maybe http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/Main_Page)

(2) Yes, this is indeed a problem. Inevitably, not everyone will be perfect saints with infinite patience. Some days, you come across that one person in a bad mood, some days you will get help. I heard someone mention a while back about linux mentoring - I think this is a good idea personally, and I help a couple of people with their problems over the net. (Telling them to apt-get/yum install ssh-server is a good first step).

Many of the IRC rooms I've been to have many helpful people. I'm not going to mention names, but the more user-oriented Linux distros seem keener to help the typical n00b, whereas the more percieved "hardcore" distros shun away anyone who cannot compile, or do not know how to set compile flags (oops, have I said too much? ;))

This happened to me. I was interested in hacking my TiVo (standalone 540-series) which is pretty much unhackable without a PROM modification. But I had managed to look through some of the files that I'd copied off the TiVo hard drive and I had some questions about one of the file formats. I looked through the SeriesII forum as well as a lot of searching and didn't find the answers to my questions, so I posted. Big mistake. :(

Please understand, I'm not new to Linux. I've been teaching a Linux Internals course for a few years now, as well as device driver development, kernel debugging, and so forth. I know a little bit about the Linux kernel. What I didn't know was the boot process used on the TiVo. I was slammed by the forum moderator ("RTFM in the Newbies section"). I thought I had done that, after already spending hours+hours of searching and reading posts that were too old to apply to my unit.

Until... I went back to the newbie forum and read every one of the sticky articles and I found 80% of the information I was looking for (sigh). Part of the problem was that the newbie forum has about 15 sticky articles, some of them with 40 pages of posts in a single thread. Experience had taught me that most of those are too old to apply to my unit, so I would open the thread and jump to the last page, working backwards through the thread, to see if I could find something relevant. Well, the information was actually in the first few posts -- the community had been editing that post and updating it as time went by.

My point to all this is that newbies often post in an area that is for developers; they should start with places like linuxquestions.org or other generic Q&A sites, then progress from there. The people that frequent those sites want to help others, not write code. They're the newbie's best chance of having their questions answered.

Are newbie's now required to show greater grace, more patience and richer respect than those already in the community? I'm not sure that's a better way.

Of course they are. Welcome to society. People are suspicious of newcomers. They're held to higher standards until the existing group becomes used to them. If you don't like it, you're free to cryogenically freeze yourself and wait and see if evolution removes these traits from the human psyche.

So the point of all this is to say, although most people don't choose technology based on personality, often personality can influence important decisions such as business expenditures.

Anyone allowing business decisions to be influenced by treatment they receive from a casual community of unpaid acquaintances is a dumbass and deserves to go out of business. Maybe if paid-for tech support told you to go RTFM, I'd be interested. Otherwise, you're just asking the wrong people.

The right people, if anyone cares to know, are to be found at linuxquestions.org. That's the epicentre of Linux users helping each other. Nobody who isn't interested in helping will even read your post.

One last thing: I'm getting a little sick of this obsession with amassing more users. This snobbery thing is an issue, absolutely. But not every issue has to be seen in terms of how it affects Linux adoption.

Unfortunately the people who are jerks to the noobs give a bad taste to those who aren't sure whether or not to leave Windows and make the switch...often enough, too many responses from the snobs could cause the person thinking of switching to just give up and stay with Windows. It's people like the jerks who make Linux almost as bad as Microsoft in the support area. "Oh, my distro and config works, yours doesn't? Well it's obviously on your side so don't waste our time cause we can't help you."

Maybe there should be more (and better) FAQs. You know, sites which answer common questions in easily understandable terms.

perhaps those in the know would do good to point out to new converts, politely, places where they are encouraged to ask quesions. I don't know, how about...

http://www.linuxquestions.org/

i've been known to pop in and answer questions for noobs. yes, sometimes it's as easy as googling and redirecting but that just makes my contribution easy .

You all may know that OpenSource isn't much loved by the ordinary users because of a range of reasons. The OSDL survey (http://www.osdl.org/dtl/DTL_Survey_Report_Nov2005 .pdf) shows that even the majority of the Linux users wish for Windows-Only applications. Novell's cool solution website (http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/feature/16798 .html) proves that their users (customers) prefer Windows-Only applications. And the thread at LinuxQuestions.org (http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthrea d.php?t=105955) gives more hints. To solve this I've a vision outlined in here (http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html ).

Sure enough this vision can only become true if many of you choose to participate which of course means a lot of work for all of you. But exactly here comes the Google SoC into play it would allow to get your own project be converted to conform to the wyoGuide guidelines (http://wyoguide.sourceforge.net/guidelines/conten t.html). So I encourage any project to apply for the Soc (http://code.google.com/soc/) to make it

• conformant to the guideline so any user may feel comfortable
• conformant in the code so any developer may feel comfortable
• conformant in spirit so the Ubuntu bug #1 (https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+bug/1) gets finally tackled.

So don't fear to apply even if your project is just a small one since when your project is converted it most probably will attract more users and more developers, soon surpassing any project which doesn't care.

If you are just a user of a project make the developers aware of this. You might even check the guidelines yourself and help in testing. Or you might help in suggestions for corrections, etc. Tell it to your friends, your university stuff or anywhere else. Just make this vision become true and the first Top inhibitors of Linux desktop adoption gets finally solved.

O. Wyss

Their specs - 512 MHz clock, 128 MB ram, 512 MB drive - aren't all that shabby. You could easily run the latest 2.6 kernel on that hardware with negligible overhead.

You aren't just shitting biscuits.
The laptop I'm typing this on is a mere 233/128 meg, 8 year old Dell Latitude CP. It runs the default 2.6 kernel that comes with Debian Sarge and... get this... the KDE desktop.

If Negroponte can't get Linux to work on his machine's specs... he's not even trying. I'd speculate that some of the previous posters were correct in that he's just looking for an "excuse".

should be more than enough to break Mircosoft's monopoly on the desktop which certainly will have a mighty impact on their ability to throw around with money. How?

Assume you have a 1000 developers who would one year fully concentrate on writing OpenSource applications according to the guidelines of wyoGuide (http://wyoguide.sf.net/). This would easily achieve up to a few hundreds cross-platform applications which are better or at least equally good as any Windows-only application. This base stock will force any software vendor who wants to stay in business to change their applications as well to comply to wyoGuide. Any application soon will be converted to cross-platform that's no question. Together with the already cross-platform Mozilla and OpenOffice this will definitely break MS monopoly on the desktop.

Then nobody would ask again for none-Linux applications anymore as here (http://www.osdl.org/dtl/DTL_Survey_Report_Nov2005 .pdf, http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread .php?t=105955 or http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/feature/16798. html). The Ubuntu Bug #1 (https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+bug/1) would finally be solve and the future as outlined here (http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html ) would become true. All would win, well maybe not MS. So why doesn't IBM size up with Novell, Sun, Oracle, Google and others and throw in 10 million each? I think each of them are able to scrap together this 10 millions without much problems.

O. Wyss

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread .php?p=2131445#post2131445 might shed some light.

And then of course there's http://sql-info.de/mysql/gotchas.html

I'm all for them taking their time in the next release especially since the development builds started supporting Broadcom chipsets. I'm running Fedora at the moment but I would gladly swith if I could get wireless running natively instead of having to deal with ndiswrapper. No disrespect to ndiswrapper, it works just fine, I just hate fiddling with it everytime I install an update to the kernal.

I sure hope someone posts the list. They should put up a site where you can type in an IP and get a name and address.

There already exists one, it's called "whois." Try whois on the command line or one of the many whois websites.

(which doesn't ship with mplayer or mp3 support, fer christsake)

Define `ship'. mplayer is in contrib, so it's definitely in the repositories--you just have to set up apt properly.

Oh, and yeah, there's no mp3 support. totem-(gstreamer|xine), vlc, mpd, playsound, xmms, and rythmbox do not exist, despite me believing I have played mp3s with every one of them on my debian "out-of-the-post-installation-box" box. I admit I have no first-hand experience with amaroK, juk, noatun or zinf, but I guess they play mp3-files just fine.

As [Score:-1,] Has Been Said, it might just be because you're not using the non-US repositories. I assume they're there so that debian can avoid breaking the law.

So this means that you're either (1) blaming yourself for not editing your sources.list; or (2) blaming debian for not breaking the law.

Do you also blame microsoft for not breaking the l... oh, never mind ;)

Hmm... I guess I came off as rather intending to start a (holy|distro|flame) war. Not intended. I'm just trying to say that you should do your research before you judge any distro. If you need help with configuring debian, I'm sure there's plenty of help available at http://www.linuxquestions.org/.

I recently picked up a perfectly functional 486-dx 66mhz Cyrix clone cpu laptop (circa 1993 - made by AST - Canadian company which no longer exists) for $45 from my local Goodwill computer store. It came with 20 MB ram, a 500 MB hard drive, two pcmcia ports, and the usual mix of parallel, serial and keyboard ports. The LCD monitor on it works perfectly, all of the keyboard functions work, and it has a built-in trackball that also is in working order. The outer case is in nearly immaculate condition - only a few scratches here and there. The battery needs to be refurbished or replaced - that is true of any 13 year old laptop.

It was running DOS 4.1 when I got it (I assume this is what it was originally loaded with). I decided to improve its utility by loading Slackware 10.2 on it (You can see the full blown procedure I used here). I did not want to use the Zipslack install method (as mentioned in the article, you have some performance issues I could not afford on such old equipment). Without a CDROM, I would need to furthermore modify the installation process. I happen to have a Iomega parallel port zip drive, so I used the boot disk for the zipslack installation to access this drive. The boot disk assumes your root disk(s) will be on the parallel port device. The problem with that is that while the zipslack install disk can recognize and use the zip drive for installation, the regular installation root disks do not (have to talk to Patrick about that). Luckily, you can specify another mount location (just not the parallel port drive) - so I set aside a 100MB partition on the hard drive, and used that for the installation.

I booted the system from floppy using the zipslack root disk and the standard installation floppies. Then I mounted the parallel port zip drive, and partitioned, formated and mounted the 'source' partition on the hard drive. After that it was a simple matter to copy over the slackware packages I had earlier copied onto a zip disk from my workstation. Finally I kicked off the setup utility after partitioning the hard drive's remaining space. After that, the install was normal. Starting with a 350 MB root partition (used 50MB for swap, and the 100MB source) - I ended up with 25% free space (used about 225 MB for the packages I loaded). I was also able to free up the 100MB source partition afterwards - so I have a whopping 175MB to play with.

Note that I did not load all the packages available from the Slackware distro - most of the A and AP packages, the key network packages, and some development packages (python). So, no X-windows. However, I found an application called 'twin' (Textmode WINdow environment) that emulated an X server, providing multiple text-based windows that have all the usual controls (resizing, scrollbars, window shade, minimize etc). Twin runs very fast on the 486, and provides the multiple window capability (including copy/paste between windows) that you would need for most jobs. Twin is an older program - last updated in 2003, which I had to build on my workstation, then move over to the laptop via the zipdrive.

Without a graphics capability, most of the modern tools available in KDE or GNOME are out of reach - but that is okay. I use 'jed' editor (emulates emacs commands - but smaller footprint), and am writing my own tools in python - basically to capture thoughts, and provide automation for uploading my field-notes onto my server when connected to my home network (saving my pennies to get a pcmcia NIC soon).

Extending the life of the laptop was well worth the trouble. While it may not be cutting edge in terms of looks - for what I do it gets the job done.

I wonder if the GnuCash developers know that even Linux users wish for none-free cash application, see

and would like to know what they consider to do against.

O. Wyss

No. I would probably never switch, and certainly there will never be a distro to suit everyone's needs/wants. Mandrakesoft and SuSE have already tried - they've done wonders for ease-of-use, but they hinder the power and control that many Linux users want over their system.

If you really think that there could/should be a "one size fits all" Linux distro, I think you should read this thread. Basically some guy had a similar idea as you (his idea was dropping support for certain distros and focusing on the "main" distros) and criticized some of the differences in all the distros, and everyone chewed him out for it.

That said, though. . . I really am all for Google making their own distro, if that's what they are going to do. I may or may not use it, who knows (personally I like Slackware), but if some people do prefer Google OS over Slackware or Ubuntu. . . fine by me.

The LinuxQuestions.org Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) is an excellent guide to Linux-compatible hardware devices, generally listing the (in)compatible Kernel/Distro version as well. It seems that Belkin cards generally do well in Linux. I recently bought and installed a Belkin Wireless Desktop Card, model F5D7000; Although it absolutely refused to work with WPA, getting 128-bit WEP to work with it was quite easy.

The LinuxQuestions.org Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) is an excellent guide to Linux-compatible hardware devices, generally listing the (in)compatible Kernel/Distro version as well. It seems that Belkin cards generally do well in Linux. I recently bought and installed a Belkin Wireless Desktop Card, model F5D7000; Although it absolutely refused to work with WPA, getting 128-bit WEP to work with it was quite easy.

... ndiswrapper and madwifi.

The two projects have different aims. If I understand it correctly Madwifi aims to have native linux drivers. ndiswrapper works by acting as a wrapper around the windows drivers. So ndiswrapper is less "pure" to the zealots, on the other hand it seemed to support more hardware. It is worth noting that the ndiswrapper might not support all hardware and to check your compatability list. Also the wireless manufacturers will sometimes shop two different chipsets in the exactly the same shell, with no differentiation between the different versions.

Check out the following HOWTO. This is specific to debian.

If people only bought hardware with good linux support, more hardware would be well-supported.

Yes, but it's difficult to find this information, especially for wireless cards?

Most Linux hardware databases that I've seen only contain a handful of reviews regarding the native support for a product. Most of the reviews are about wrappers for the non-native drivers.

For example, Linuxquestions.org has a very large HCL database. If you browse the Wireless Cards/Network Card list, you'll see that many cards receive a score of 9.0 or greater. However, if you dig deeper you'll notice that most of the high scores come from people who are using Ndiswrapper to wrap around Non-Native drivers... and yet they give the card a score 10 out of 10 points.

What's the point of having a scale of 1-10 if most reviewers assign a score of "10" for such cruddy products?

Thanks for the reply.

Have now tried the archives. No luck but may have given me a hint.

A deeper serach shows other people having ubuntu printing issues.
Eg http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread .php?t=304809 says localhost:631 disabled by default in ubuntu
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDownUnder/BOFs/Print ingRoadmap?highlight=(print)
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDownUnder/BOFs/Print ingRoadmap?highlight=(print)

May have lucked onto something in my archive search though - looks like I may need Ghostscript installed or activated or something - is hard to tell if it is enabled by default in ubuntu. And maybe a special driver for the canon not sure.

The Kyocera well it may or may not have a life.

PS: both are work issued for home so looking for linux support before buying wasn't on the cards.

The laptop I have is an old Dell Latitude CP M233XT, circa 1997. It runs Debian Sarge... you know the one... released 5 years after Microsoft WindowsXP. I wasn't willing to shell out 200 bucks to buy XP just to find out that it would be awful, but you, me, Bill Gates, the mailman, and his dog knows that it would most likely be unusable. The machine's by no means fast, but it works fairly well and I get close to 5 hours out the 2 batteries I have for it. I use this laptop everyday for my business and I have zero complaints about usability.

I bought a USB Radioshark, set it up under Linux, and used Icecast with Liveice to setup realtime streaming.

I then setup a cgi to change stations. Works like a charm.

Linux isn't an entity with one goal, it's not a corporation with a guiding mission. It doesn't want to be superior, although some beleive certain things it does, it does better than any other alternative.

And look at server statistics, you'll see something other than 1% maketshare, all without a unified marketing department!

Since when does Microsoft listen?

And is my "tough talk" really the reason you've stayed away from linux? When you post questions to a linux help board, did people really flame you? Or did you never get to that step? I've never had a hostile response to a simple inquiry, (but then again thats not a reliable statistic), in fact the reponses have been patient, helpful and speedy.

There are a volumes of sites DEDICATED to answering the most basic beginner questions, with thousands of Linux users waiting to help you! Help me, help you!

http://www.linuxquestions.org/
http://www.justlinux.com/

If you can post a basic question and get a negative response, I'll eat my shirt.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/

Use Xsu to get a graphical su login automatically when you need it (configuration varies). Instead of opening a new terminal and typing "su [enter] password [enter] vi /etc/mpd.conf [enter]," you'll just be typing "password [enter]" whenever you need to access something as root.

Use a graphical file explorer like Rox to navigate and sort through directories quickly. Don't rely on ls for everything; it is far faster and more flexible to organize files graphically. Dragging a box and one click-drag can replace dozens of keystrokes across multiple commands.

If you always startup X after you login, then have X startup automatically. No reason to type "startx" every time.

Use Conky for system monitoring.

Let normal users halt or reboot the system if appropriate. In many, many cases it's silly to maintain the *nix default behavior of only letting root shutdown/reboot the system. If you're running a server with dozens of remote users then yes, this would be unwise. If it's your personal workstation though, it's completely reasonable.

Use "slocate" instead of "find." Pardon me if this is obvious, but I still see too many *nix diehards waiting for "find" to finish when there's a perfectly up to date slocate DB ready for searching. "find" is nearly obsolete.

Have your drives automounted with Submount. It's pretty sad that something like this is not standard in the 2.6 kernel. Typing a command every time you want to read a CD looks pathetic to the average Windows user used to autorun or clicking "My Computer."

That's all I have for now. Basically, I liberally automate outdated procedures (which many *nix users still tolerate). This makes day-to-day operations much smoother overall, and doesn't disrupt tasks by having to constantly bring up new terminal windows.

I'm rather happy to see that Micro$oft is selling more software than (what I'm assuming to mean) Linux developers. Because there are still more Linux servers in use than Windows, that can only mean that people are downloading the bloody operating system for free. Not like there's any shortage of sites...

Note the difference between selling (distributing in exchange for a fee) and using (making it do useful work).

Yay, misleading statistics!!

There's actually another list called Seattle wireless or something to that effect. I'm too lazy to look it up. Unfortunately, even with that list you don't get the whole picture. For example look at this card http://www.linuxquestions.org/hcl/showproduct.php? product=2386&sort=8&cat=133&page=1. The same revision can actually have two different chipsets. Marvel (which isn't open sources) and Atheros (which is).

If you're buying one for a laptop the best bet is to do your homework, find a few cards that *might* have a supported chipset, call up your local best buy, compusa, frys, whatever, and take your laptop with you in the car and just try them out and take them back if they don't work.

Oh, and good luck finding G cards that don't require ndiswrapper. That's even more of a crapshoot.

The best Hardware Compatability List for Linux that I've seen is here:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/hcl/index.php

It could be better (it HAS to get better) but I did get some useful modem purchasing info from it.

You are wise to inquire about Linux compatability before buying components for your 'industry standard x86 platform'.

And for everybody else who has better uses for their cash (like groceries):
http://www.linuxlookup.com/html/main/iso.html Get Linux.
http://www.linuxiso.org/ Get Linux.
http://distrowatch.com/ Get Linux (or BSD).
http://www.livingwithoutmicrosoft.org/ Learn more about alternatives.
http://www.linuxquestions.org/ Ask a Linux pro.
http://madpenguin.org/cms/ Read reviews of Linux.

Ask slashdot should be used for more general topics. Topics that can create discussion. This is a techinical problem that would be better asked at LQ

Linux is easy and can do everything Windows and Mac can, with some exceptions such as games - for people who like anti-aliasing. For those who can't stand the fuzzy fonts, Linux is far from usable.

On Windows, if you like clear fonts, you just find the little check-box for anti-aliasing, uncheck it, maybe reboot, and the interface is *beautiful*, *perfect*. Every letter is crisp with clean, sharp edges, and well-formed, well-hinted at any size.

On Linux, if you can't tolerate the blurry look, you're in for a long ordeal to even try to get readable fonts without anti-aliasing. Getting rid of the a-a, and getting decent hinting are *both* daunting tasks even for techies.

Most "newbie" tutorials are on trivial things like changing the background images or playing media files. You have to locate relatively obscure pages like this and this.

Then you have to find out how to first tweak, and then compile source packages on Linux. Then you have to somehow get the system to use the one set of fonts and version of X rather than the other.

I'm beyond expert status on Windows, yet I still haven't got fonts looking readable after hours of messing with Suse 10. For the non-technical user it's unrealistic to imagine they would ever figure it out, or even find someone to fix it for them.

Evidently most people like anti-aliasing. And that's fine for them. For the rest of us, Linux has a *huge* obstacle to usability.

Sometimes I think that's what the XBox is all about: "Get them while they're young."

Just as important is what Linux can "see and touch". So I will put this very un-subtley: HCL! HCL! HCL! HCL! Live by your distro's Hardware Compatability List and demand Linux compatability before you buy. That kind of pressure is the only way we'll get hardware mfgs to back-off from their MS "special relationships", their Vista-Gfx cards, their WinCableModem cards, etc.

Someone recently asked me if Linux was compatible with the Internet... with a straight face. It was not a joke and I was mortified.

Here is one HCL site for starters. It's not great, but its a start anyway. XandrOS also has a decent list. People, this is just as important for gaining acceptance as the LSB; We can't pretend that Linux is just like Windows, that we can just buy the prettiest hardware on sale and wrestle it with Linux when we get home (or worse, in the office). Check compatability first!

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=61228&threshol d=1&commentsort=0&tid=131&mode=thread&cid=5758997
http://freetype.sourceforge.net/patents.html

http://en.tldp.org/HOWTO/FDU/truetype.html

http://www.niii.ru.nl/~pauldv/fonts.php

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread .php?s=&threadid=257705

Does this help? Basically the 2 issues are hints embedded within a font for optimal viewing, and the second have to do with freetype fonts which modern oses use over ttfonts. The Linux version is not feature complete due to the legal mess. I am sure you can download the patented versions and install it yourself but its a pain.

Of course, you can: Use alien: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/answers.ph p?action=viewarticle&artid=393

When I started using linux for the first time, I first visited these sites to get my problems solved. I list some of them below.

http://linuxquestions.org/
http://linuxhelp.blogspot.com/
http://linux.org/
http://tldp.org/

LinuxQuestions
As you are using ubuntu you could try the Ubuntu forumns as well. I am not familiar with Ubuntu's config utils and I am not that familiar with setting up two sound cards in Linux from the command line. Is there a reason you can't just disable the AC97 in Bios?

I've been trying to kick the habit too. 2000 is fine, but will be unsupported before too long. XP is too glitzy, and begins the trend of taking control away from the hardware owner. Vista, with its DRM and *even more* visual fluff, is not for me.

The surprising, and obstinate problem for me has been the fonts on Linux. Apparently most people actually *like* anti-aliasing. Whenever I'm web-searching to find out how to get rid of it, I'm always seeing people praising it and saying it's "beautiful".

For me the anti-aliasing makes the whole system utterly unusable. No matter how it's adjusted, or what fonts are used, the fuzziness is intolerable within a few minutes.

This is not a troll! I'm getting to the point.

Yes, I know how to research and generally solve my own computer problems. I even found a page on "how to get fonts looking nice on Linux without aa" - Franklin's post on linuxquestions.org. Following these instructions has led me to discover how to compile applications from source and other interesting things. Yet after many hours I still haven't managed to get rid of the a-a.

This one issue alone has taken me more than a week already, allowing for work, social life and other projects.

Yes, I'll solve it sooner or later, and then make more progress more quickly, and write it up for others. But how many would even spend as much time as I have already?

Windows has succeeded because of (a) coopting all the major OEMS (b) other ruthless tactics and (c) solving UI problems long ago. (c) is underappreciated! I certainly didn't realize its importance until I ran into this font issue.

So what do the Linux vendors do? They constantly add more clever, tricky features (I'm thinking of KDE), while never fixing these very basic, subtle GUI issues. Fonts are just one example. Look at the greater consistency and attention to detail that make people admire the Mac UI.

Well, sorry, I'm not sure what my point is. Maybe just that Linux needs more work on basic GUI stuff to be ready for the mainstream.

Like many others here, I hesitate to even bring this up because anyone who points out these things gets bounced between "you're a MS shill!" and "fix it yourself!" with a bit of "be grateful for all the devs have done!". Well, I am grateful, and I have no time for hobby coding, and my employer won't sponsor it, and yes, I give money.

I *want* Linux to be ready for the desktop. I want it to happen to happen before the "trusted computing" DRM / lock-in scheme takes hold too widely. Everyone needs it for the this reason, though most don't even realize that freedom of uncensored communication in the future depends on it.

As a side note, I don't think I've ever seen Gnome ahead of KDE in a poll before.

As a side note, I don't think I've ever seen Gnome ahead of KDE in a poll before.

Please finish up your drink before reading it:

Enjoy!

Why compile from scratch? Get apt-get! Here's a link on how to set up apt-get and then here's another link on how to set up your /etc/apt/sources.list files. Then just apt-get install mplayer, windows codex and lame. I use SuSE 9.3 and it plays multimedia better than my WinXP box any day of the week. BTW...you did not need to pay $100 for SuSE 9.3. You could have done a network install for free.

In my notebook I couldn't make the internal modem work (Toshiba M35X S149, Ubuntu 5.04). But the built-in WiFi card works out of the box with Ubuntu. So I think I could buy this to use my modem when traveling to a place without wireless internet? Or would be better to buy a pcmcia card modem? I think this could be best since I know that my wifi works, but I don't know about pcmcia modems and linux compatibility.

Not sure about that, but it IS the same eBay that threatened to delete user's accounts because they were selling Linux. . .