Re: Universal sound card?

mike wrote:

Dances With Crows wrote:

Why do you need to run multiple LiveCDs here? Are you testing them out
or something? The thing to do is to pick a distro, figure out how to
use it, and put it on a local disk.

If only that worked. Linux zealots are clueless to the difficulty
mere windows mortals have deciphering the different ways of installing
hardware in the different distributions.

Then perhaps us GNU/Linux zealots have in the meantime developed a few extra
neurons that are still missing from the brains of the mere Windows mortals.

However, my expert opinion on the matter and my geek ethics require me to
inform you that a prolonged use of (any version of) Windows will cause an
early onset of Alzheimers, rather than the development of new neurons.

Distribution A doesn't support the sound card.
Distribution B supports the sound card, but not the network card.
Distribution C supports neither.
Change the card to one that A supports and now, Vista won't recognize it.

Apparently, none of the distributions you're using support connecting to
Usenet either, since you're carrying this header around with you...:

*User-Agent:* Thunderbird 1.5 (Windows/20051201)

Really don't want customizable. I want network, sound, display to just
work.

Whether a particular hardware device works in a particular distribution or
not depends on two things - something which you mere Windows mortals don't
seem to grasp just yet.

The first thing would be the kernel version supplied with each of the
selected distributions. Some have a more recent kernel than others, and
recent kernels have more hardware support than older kernels. Distribution
makers often add hardware-supporting patches to their distribution-specific
kernels which are backported from later vanilla kernels.

(A vanilla kernel is the kernel as developed by Linus Torvalds and the
kernel development team directly, without any of the distribution-specific
patches. Distribution kernels are typically of an older generation simply
because of the fact that those were the current stable kernel version when
the distribution's current release was built, and which it was built
against.)

The second thing is where proprietary software comes in. The Linux kernel
is licensed under version 2 of the GPL (GNU General Public License), which
implicitly and explicitly forbids linking of proprietary code into the
kernel. As such, some distributions offer freely downloadable GNU/Linux
systems which lack all of the proprietary stuff, and not just because
including it would be a violation of the GPL, but perhaps even more
importantly because the proprietary stuff's own license forbids freely
distributing the stuff.

Commercial distributions such as Novell/SuSE, RedHat, TurboLinux or Mandriva
will therefore include the proprietary drivers - usually those are for
video adapters and wireless network adapters - and proprietary plugins
(such as Flash, Sun's JRE, et al) in their shrinkwrapped, boxed sets,
because they have struck a deal with the proprietary entities to do so, and
they can regain this investment by asking money for their distributions.

Either way, the bottom line is this: if a particular piece of hardware does
not work in your particular GNU/Linux distribution, then you've bought the
wrong hardware. All standardized hardware is supported by the vanilla
Linux kernel out of the box, and many proprietary hardware devices have
proprietary drivers that are freely downloadable at no fee from their
manufacturer's website, so if you own _any_ hardware that's not supported
at all, then this is not standardized hardware, period.

Just because your hardware is supported in any release of Windows - with a
little help from an equally proprietary hardware driver from the pertaining
device's vendor - while this device does not have support for GNU/Linux,
doesn't mean that your hardware is standard. It simply means that you've
fallen for the consumerist propaganda and bought something that was
Designed For Windows XP/Vista (TM), and then I'm willing to bet that there
was a shiny sticker with that slogan on either the device or its
shrinkwrapped box as well.

Just goes to show how debilitating Windows is, even for Microsoft's own
developers, if the hardware manufacturer has to specifically design his
hardware for compatibility with Windows, rather than the other way around.

Sorry for the rant, but you were either asking for it or in desperate need
of enlightenment. I can only hope that reading all of the above has made
you grow a few extra neurons. If it didn't, then by all means go back to
using Windows - well, you *are* using Windows right now anyway - but then
please don't nag about an operating system that will always be vastly
superior to anything released from that particular company in Redmond,
Washington and that even in its most expensive commercial iterations will
also always be vastly more affordable than any version of Windows as well,
not to mention that Windows requires third-party software in order to be
usable for anything other than sending an e-mail and surfing the web, or
perhaps even more importantly, that it needs third-party software just to
protect it from its own security leaks.

92% of all e-mail traffic on the internet is pure and unadulterated spam,
and at the same time about 85% of all Windows machines on the planet are
part of at least one of the many botnets from which the bulk of that spam
is being sent on a daily basis. Chances are that some of the spam reaching
my "Trash" maildir was sent from your computer. And *you're* complaining?

Are we developing neurons yet, Grasshopper? <evil grin>

--
*Aragorn*
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)
.

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