From: /m 

On Wed, 26 Jul 2006 09:38:38 +0100, Adam  wrote:

>/m wrote:
>> On Tue, 25 Jul 2006 18:20:01 -0400, "Gary Britt"
 wrote:
>>
>>> You know reading the multitude of threads springing up
suddenly about doing
>>> things with Linux and it makes me wonder if its ready for mass
desktop use,
>>> even now after many years of steady improvement.  Theses
messages make it
>>> clear there are many secret command line incantations that one
must know to
>>> do many things.
>>>
>>> On the other hand I read something about Damn Small Linux the other day,
and
>>> it sounds like it will install on my old Pentium 233 laptop
with 4 gig hard
>>> drive.  I'm going to install it to give it a go.
>>>
>>> I watched that most impressive XGL (whatever that is) Suse 10.1 linux
video.
>>> Definitely impressive stuff.  Most of it unneeded fluff but
impressive none
>>> the less.  Then I read somebody's comment that XGL doesn't
work with NVidia
>>> or ATI video cards in a default install and you have to get drivers and
>>> recompile the kernel etc. to make it work.  Gee, the two most
popular video
>>> chipsets in the world and it doesn't support them out of the box in a
>>> default configuration.   That kind of stuff has got to improve
for Linux to
>>> conquer the world, even given the WGA and Vista Op Sys trojans.
>>
>>
>> Wireless support is very weak as well.
>>
>>  /m
>
>Blimey it must be my OS/2 heritage when it comes to choosing clone kit
>but.....I installed mandriva 2k6 on my old laptop for my daughter &
>chucked in a pcmcia wifi card et voila....that was about it other than
>entering the security credentials (via a GUI wizard) to hook into my
>home wifi hub.

WPA/2 is not supported.   With Ubuntu, it sees my Atheros-based PC Card,
but cannot initialize it, even if I try WEP.

SuSE 10.1 had no wireless support at all.  I had to download the Mad-WiFi
stuff (which didn't support WPA/2).

If I could find a Linux distro with decent wireless support, I would have
put Linux on my notebook, instead of W2K, when I went to The Netherlands
last week.

  /m

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