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| would you like to see ndiswrapper on the livecd |
| yes |
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75% |
[ 51 ] |
| no |
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25% |
[ 17 ] |
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| Total Votes : 68 |
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opopanax
Apprentice
Joined: 30 Aug 2004
Posts: 244
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 Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 8:42 pm Post subject: Yeah! |
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Couple of points:
Had to move my main pc away from the router because of space requirements, etc, and there are already a bumload of pc's floating around in the house. So, I had to get a card and get it quick--I went out, looked at the cards, wrote them down, and did my research--none of the ones available in town (about 5) had native linux support. Enter ndiswrapper. I have had no problems with it--but what I don't understand is why someone is calling it creepy hardware. Just because someone hasn't taken the time to write a native driver for it (probably because it works just fine under ndiswrapper, and why reinvent the wheel) doesn't make the hardware creepy. The damned thing works.
However, that said, ndiswrapper doesn't belong on gentoo's installation media. IMHO there's just too much other stuff to worry about with a stage 3 to stage 1 install than worrying if the foreign module plus the foreign driver is doing something to you. I always get basic functionality working (networking, hotplug, audio, udev) before I start messing with 3rd party drivers and other things that could screw up the functionality of the kernel. This is just for troubleshooting purposes.
However, if you absolutely need it, MEPIS provides ndiswrapper out of the box--so why not use it to boot, and then do all your installation in a chroot? portage provides it, so you could install it while connected wired real quick, when you're setting up your environment, and then disconnect when you're done and bring up the wireless. Not that hard, and you're doing it anyway. I just don't thing it belongs. Thanks for listening. |
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Bad Penguin
Guru
Joined: 18 Aug 2004
Posts: 507
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| Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 9:04 pm Post subject: |
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| amne wrote: | Folks, it's not like we are discussing if Gentoo should support ndiswrapper in general, it's just about the live-CD. If you want to install Gentoo on a system that has a device requiring ndiswrapper you can
a) install using hard-wired ethernet, even if you have to relocate your notebook to another room for 2 hours or so. As soon you're done with the install you can emerge ndiswrapper and you are done. |
I have two full workstations that use wireless, along with 19 inch monitors. It is not quite so easy to lug these up and down stairs... It is not only laptops/notebooks that use wireless cards. There are also work environments that access to a switch port or hub is not an option.
| amne wrote: |
b) use any other live CD that supports ndiswrapper.
c) build your own live CD with catalyst.
The releng appearently has no interest in supporting ndiswrapper on the live CDs for some reasons as license issues and/or not willing to add another package that breaks stuff and needs testing while there are plenty of alternatives putting no extra work on Releng that work quite well, too. |
At minimum they can just include ndiswrapper on the install/livecd. Leave it up to the user how to get the installation media with the drivers mounted and installed with ndiswrapper. Although setting up encryption correctly is not for the faint at heart 
I don't know where you are getting these ideas about license issues and breakage. The only responses I see in the bug (from releng) is that there is "no point" to having it on the cds, an invitation to do a networkless installation, and a mention of no additional software being added because of some vague shift in a new direction for future releases, whatever that means.
The bottom line is that there is really no technical reason not to add it. Having it would only allow more people to more conveniently install gentoo who otherwise could not.
As far as building my own live/installcds, can you kindly provide me with a link to the spec files used to generate the latest release? |
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slonocode
Apprentice
Joined: 03 Jun 2002
Posts: 273
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| Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 9:15 pm Post subject: |
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The Gentoo Philosophy:
| Quote: | | Put another way, the Gentoo philosophy is to create better tools. When a tool is doing its job perfectly, you might not even be very aware of its presence, because it does not interfere and make its presence known, nor does it force you to interact with it when you don't want it to. The tool serves the user rather than the user serving the tool. |
It would seem that lugging a run of ethernet cable to a place that you don't want to or that would be very inconvenient is akin to the user serving the tool. You know the tool that's supposed to let the user get the job done seemlessly and the way they want to. At least according to the gentoo philosophy. |
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brainiac_ghost
n00b
Joined: 19 Sep 2004
Posts: 40
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| Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 9:17 pm Post subject: |
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@badpenguin: you can just | Code: | | USE="examples doc" emerge -av catalyst |
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Bad Penguin
Guru
Joined: 18 Aug 2004
Posts: 507
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| Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 9:46 pm Post subject: |
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| brainiac_ghost wrote: | @badpenguin: you can just | Code: | | USE="examples doc" emerge -av catalyst |
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Hah hah, funny.
I don't want example specs, I want the exact same specs that were used to generate the release media. They are not in catalyst, they are not in cvs, not documented in the release engineering project page, they are not anywhere that I can find. For that matter, which version of catalyst was used to generate them?
If I could figure that stuff out I probably could generate my own livecd with ndiswrapper support. Reinventing that particular wheel, on my own, no thanks.
Perhaps I will just post to the catlyst mailing list and ask them, imagine that |
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pilla
Bodhisattva
Joined: 07 Aug 2002
Posts: 7729
Location: Underworld
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| Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 9:57 pm Post subject: |
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Maybe you should refine your search skills
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_build_a_LiveCD
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amne
Bodhisattva
Joined: 17 Nov 2002
Posts: 6378
Location: Graz / EU
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| Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 10:00 pm Post subject: |
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| Bad Penguin wrote: | | I have two full workstations that use wireless, along with 19 inch monitors. It is not quite so easy to lug these up and down stairs... It is not only laptops/notebooks that use wireless cards. There are also work environments that access to a switch port or hub is not an option. |
So, you carelessly bought cards that are only supported by ndiswrapper and put them in a place where you don't have wired ethernet. Now the Gentoo Live CD doesn't support it. I know it may be hard to accept, but it seems no one cares about you then. Why should other people solve the problems caused only by your rather problematic choices if there are already plenty of alternatives (like buying decent hardware, using a cable or simply a live CD that supports ndiswrapper out of the box).
| Bad Penguin wrote: | | At minimum they can just include ndiswrapper on the install/livecd. Leave it up to the user how to get the installation media with the drivers mounted and installed with ndiswrapper. Although setting up encryption correctly is not for the faint at heart |
If we ship a Live CD with something people expect it to work.
| Bad Penguin wrote: | | I don't know where you are getting these ideas about license issues and breakage. The only responses I see in the bug (from releng) is that there is "no point" to having it on the cds, an invitation to do a networkless installation, and a mention of no additional software being added because of some vague shift in a new direction for future releases, whatever that means. |
Licensing: As far i understand we wouldn't be able to ship the windows drivers but users would have to install them manually. Hence the use of ndiswrapper on the live CD is questionable in the first place as one would need to add the driver. If you do that you can also install ndiswrapper yourself.
Breakage: There is currently at least one open bug about it: Bug 121455, others were fixed. If you want the Live CD to support ndiswrapper it needs testing, bug fixing resulting in additional work for the Releng team.
| Bad Penguin wrote: | | The bottom line is that there is really no technical reason not to add it. Having it would only allow more people to more conveniently install gentoo who otherwise could not. |
There is also no reason to add it as it a) increases our work and b) there are lots of ways to solve the problem - see above.
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Bad Penguin
Guru
Joined: 18 Aug 2004
Posts: 507
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| Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 10:17 pm Post subject: |
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| amne wrote: | | Bad Penguin wrote: | | I have two full workstations that use wireless, along with 19 inch monitors. It is not quite so easy to lug these up and down stairs... It is not only laptops/notebooks that use wireless cards. There are also work environments that access to a switch port or hub is not an option. |
So, you carelessly bought cards that are only supported by ndiswrapper and put them in a place where you don't have wired ethernet. |
Carelessly? Lets not get personal, you have no clue. Like I said above, I bought the _only_ cards available at my Best Buy. Secondly, I did the initial install _before_ I converted to wireless, so it was done via ethernet.
| amne wrote: | | Now the Gentoo Live CD doesn't support it. I know it may be hard to accept, but it seems no one cares about you then. Why should other people solve the problems caused only by your rather problematic choices if there are already plenty of alternatives (like buying decent hardware, using a cable or simply a live CD that supports ndiswrapper out of the box). |
You got one part correct - "no one cares about you then". This is a very accurate description of the response from you and the gentoo developers who fielded the request in the first place. A very callous, arrogant attitude. Not a single valid technical reason not to help out the end users. Keep up the good work. Your distribution will go the way of XFree86 in no time.
| amne wrote: | | Bad Penguin wrote: | | I don't know where you are getting these ideas about license issues and breakage. The only responses I see in the bug (from releng) is that there is "no point" to having it on the cds, an invitation to do a networkless installation, and a mention of no additional software being added because of some vague shift in a new direction for future releases, whatever that means. |
Licensing: As far i understand we wouldn't be able to ship the windows drivers but users would have to install them manually. Hence the use of ndiswrapper on the live CD is questionable in the first place as one would need to add the driver. If you do that you can also install ndiswrapper yourself.
Breakage: There is currently at least one open bug about it: Bug 121455, others were fixed. If you want the Live CD to support ndiswrapper it needs testing, bug fixing resulting in additional work for the Releng team. |
Installing the drivers consists of the following very complicated and difficult to support commands:
| Code: |
ndiswrapper -i /path/to/file.inf
modprobe ndiswrapper
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Nobody is asking for windows drivers to be included on anything.
The bug you point to, the key quote is "I do have crazy cflags, but if they are the problem it will be the first thing in a year". No crazy cflags on the release media, they are very conservative. And oh yeah, I happen to use the exact same bcmwl5 driver with no problems.
I would be more than happy to test for release engineering. Not that big of a deal to boot off of a CD and determine if it works or not.
| amne wrote: | | Bad Penguin wrote: | | The bottom line is that there is really no technical reason not to add it. Having it would only allow more people to more conveniently install gentoo who otherwise could not. |
There is also no reason to add it as it a) increases our work and b) there are lots of ways to solve the problem - see above. |
Increases "your" work? Are you the release engineering team? If that is your attitude, you might be better suited doing development on a project without users. |
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Bad Penguin
Guru
Joined: 18 Aug 2004
Posts: 507
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| Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 10:20 pm Post subject: |
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| brainiac_ghost wrote: | @badpenguin: you can just | Code: | | USE="examples doc" emerge -av catalyst |
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Thankfully Andrew pointed me in the right direction!
If anyone is interested the specs are here:
http://sources.gentoo.org/viewcvs.py/gentoo/src/releng/specs/2006.0/
The 2006.0 release was built with catalyst-2.0_rc39. |
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Bad Penguin
Guru
Joined: 18 Aug 2004
Posts: 507
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| Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 10:21 pm Post subject: |
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That is not an "official" gentoo documentation site, more often than not the documents there are out of date. Secondly, the site is not responding, which is not that rare. But hey, thanks for the pointer. |
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Earthwings
Bodhisattva
Joined: 14 Apr 2003
Posts: 7753
Location: Germany
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| Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 10:36 pm Post subject: |
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| Bad Penguin wrote: | | Lets not get personal, you have no clue. |
Please keep the tone nice and friendly. Thanks.
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amne
Bodhisattva
Joined: 17 Nov 2002
Posts: 6378
Location: Graz / EU
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| Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 10:38 pm Post subject: |
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| Bad Penguin wrote: | | Carelessly? Lets not get personal, you have no clue. |
Uhm, lol? You accuse me of getting personal because i use the term "carelessly"? Maybe it is some language problem because i not native speaker of English language, but i think in English language you say carelessly if someone does not make big heap care. Which you not did when buy wireless card at big shopping mall.
Even funnier you accuse me of having no clue in the same sentence.
| Bad Penguin wrote: | | Like I said above, I bought the _only_ cards available at my Best Buy. Secondly, I did the initial install _before_ I converted to wireless, so it was done via ethernet. |
So it's up to the Gentoo devs to fix your problems caused because Best Buy doesn't have cards that work properly and you still decided to buy them?
| Bad Penguin wrote: | | You got one part correct - "no one cares about you then". This is a very accurate description of the response from you and the gentoo developers who fielded the request in the first place. A very callous, arrogant attitude. Not a single valid technical reason not to help out the end users. Keep up the good work. Your distribution will go the way of XFree86 in no time. |
I clearly stated a lot of alternatives, i also stated why no one cares about putting a lot of effort into doing something that serves only a minority of users with a rather problematic attitude why it should be done in the first place. Of course it would be nice to have ndiswrapper on the Live CD, but the effort is much higher than the actual positive effects gained by it. The Gentoo devs have stated quite clearly they don't want to support ndiswrapper on the Live CD, so why can't you accept that and use one of the many Live CDs that already do?
| Bad Penguin wrote: | | Increases "your" work? Are you the release engineering team? If that is your attitude, you might be better suited doing development on a project without users. |
No, but i like to think of Gentoo as a team.
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Dinosaur week! (Ok, this thread is so last week) |
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Shadow Skill
Veteran
Joined: 04 Dec 2004
Posts: 1023
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| Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 10:59 pm Post subject: Re: Yeah! |
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| sketelsen wrote: | Couple of points:
Had to move my main pc away from the router because of space requirements, etc, and there are already a bumload of pc's floating around in the house. So, I had to get a card and get it quick--I went out, looked at the cards, wrote them down, and did my research--none of the ones available in town (about 5) had native linux support. Enter ndiswrapper. I have had no problems with it--but what I don't understand is why someone is calling it creepy hardware. Just because someone hasn't taken the time to write a native driver for it (probably because it works just fine under ndiswrapper, and why reinvent the wheel) doesn't make the hardware creepy. The damned thing works.
However, that said, ndiswrapper doesn't belong on gentoo's installation media. IMHO there's just too much other stuff to worry about with a stage 3 to stage 1 install than worrying if the foreign module plus the foreign driver is doing something to you. I always get basic functionality working (networking, hotplug, audio, udev) before I start messing with 3rd party drivers and other things that could screw up the functionality of the kernel. This is just for troubleshooting purposes.
However, if you absolutely need it, MEPIS provides ndiswrapper out of the box--so why not use it to boot, and then do all your installation in a chroot? portage provides it, so you could install it while connected wired real quick, when you're setting up your environment, and then disconnect when you're done and bring up the wireless. Not that hard, and you're doing it anyway. I just don't thing it belongs. Thanks for listening. |
How does that matter at all since if ndiswrapper simply does not work for whatever reason one would either A compile thier own kernel and then reload ndiswrapper and the appropriate drivers. B. simply use a networkless install and then deal with Ndiswrapper after they have a working Kernel. I truly doubt if it is unheard of for Linux users to have to load third party modules for various hardware like raid cards or graphics drivers should this not be possible at all just because the modules could break the kernel? Ndiswrapper itself is small enough that it shouldn't take up so much room on the installation media that it would displace anything else that could be more important. Expecting someone to download an entirely seperate distro in order to install Gentoo is just silly.
The resistance I am seeing here reminds me of the resistance I got when I suggested to the developer of mp3tag [A very good mass tagging program for Windows.] that he add a database or cache to the program to speed up the loading of the songs. At the time it took approximately two minutes to load my music collection of around 800 songs, where as a competeing program took approximately three seconds to do the same since it used a cache or database of some sort. The only real thing that kept me from using that program was the fact that it suffered from "window overkill." [Think of older versions of Opera only about ten to twenty times worse.]
The response I got was that it would somehow cause problems [My ass] would it be somewhat complex sure but cause problems I seriously doubt it. I was also told by someone else to just constantly change directories instead of trying to load all the songs at once and then filter them as needed. Which of course A defeats the whole concept of a masstagger, B is alot slower than just filtering the songs from within the program. C Would require me to dive through in some cases four or five directories to get to what I wanted assuming of course I could even remember the exact path I had for the particular folder a song is in since I really don't make it a point to commit oh forty or fifty paths to long term memory when thinking of the artist or album name is more than enough for everyday use with Amarok or Winamp.
It also doesn't help that if one has to change the tag format on a few hundred or for some people a few thousand songs one could really enjoy the very LONG loading time mp3tag had. [I have actually had reason to do this so this is in no way just a hypothetical thing.] I have since upgraded my machine so my hardware is compensating for the slowness of the song load mechanism.
I will never understand why developers or even non developers show such resistance to something that would have very little negative effect on the overall usability of the program and instead decide its better to screw people so that they can hold on to thier delusion that whatever it is they have produced really gives people the things they need. It would be a totally different matter if something is simply beyond the skills of the developer to actually accomplish as we are all human and not one of us is capable of doing everything.
By the way saying "It's your fault for nuying hardware that Linux doesn't like" is not a very intelligent argument because to put it simply it is not always possible to find hardware that actually does exactly what you want and has native Linux support. I know I bought the card I happen to have now because it did what I needed of it unlike the cards I was able to find that had native Linux support at the time I bought my current wireless card. I did purchase it because I knew it would work with Ndiswrapper unlike my previous two cards which I got before I ever really got into Linux.
_________________
Ware wa mutekinari.
Wa ga kage waza ni kanau mono nashi.
Wa ga ichigeki wa mutekinari.
"First there was nothing, so the lord gave us light. There was still nothing, but at least you could see it." |
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aidanjt
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Joined: 20 Feb 2005
Posts: 1118
Location: Rep. of Ireland
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| Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 11:26 pm Post subject: |
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My God, what do you people expect from "Designed for Microsoft Windows" hardware.. one of the logo certiera is practically not having drivers for anything else.
Facts of computing:
1) Wireless is a substandard networking medium at best
2) Routing ethernet cables isn't rocket science
3) The majority of wireless hardware is Windows only
4) Buying Windows only hardware only encourages Windows only development
When I buy hardware I ensure there is opensource drivers available, I wont even go with binary supplied drivers anymore because they are a major pain in the ass. I will never use wireless for anything more than running around outdoors with a laptop, since I don't even like laptops that means I'll never use wireless. So the moral of the story is, Wireless sucks ass, don't use it. And binary (or worse yet, Windows) drivers sucks ass even moreso, so don't get that type of hardware and come bitching to the open source community because your shit propriatory locked hardware doesn't work (gasp horror, what a supprise). |
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slonocode
Apprentice
Joined: 03 Jun 2002
Posts: 273
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| Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 11:43 pm Post subject: |
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| AidanJT wrote: | My God, what do you people expect from "Designed for Microsoft Windows" hardware.. one of the logo certiera is practically not having drivers for anything else.
Facts of computing:
1) Wireless is a substandard networking medium at best
2) Routing ethernet cables isn't rocket science
3) The majority of wireless hardware is Windows only
4) Buying Windows only hardware only encourages Windows only development
When I buy hardware I ensure there is opensource drivers available, I wont even go with binary supplied drivers anymore because they are a major pain in the ass. I will never use wireless for anything more than running around outdoors with a laptop, since I don't even like laptops that means I'll never use wireless. So the moral of the story is, Wireless sucks ass, don't use it. And binary (or worse yet, Windows) drivers sucks ass even moreso, so don't get that type of hardware and come bitching to the open source community because your shit propriatory locked hardware doesn't work (gasp horror, what a supprise). |
It does work. With ndiswrapper. |
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aidanjt
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Location: Rep. of Ireland
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| Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 11:47 pm Post subject: |
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| Its a hit/miss/or maybe 'solution', and certainly not an out-of-the-box solution, definatly not a clean solution, and it'll never be an OPEN solution. |
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slonocode
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Joined: 03 Jun 2002
Posts: 273
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| Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 11:48 pm Post subject: |
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| AidanJT wrote: | | Its a hit/miss/or maybe 'solution', and certainly not an out-of-the-box solution, definatly not a clean solution, and it'll never be an OPEN solution. |
Nobody is claiming that it is. But it works and it would be helpful to have it on the livecd. |
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Shadow Skill
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Joined: 04 Dec 2004
Posts: 1023
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| Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 11:53 pm Post subject: |
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| AidanJT wrote: | My God, what do you people expect from "Designed for Microsoft Windows" hardware.. one of the logo certiera is practically not having drivers for anything else.
Facts of computing:
1) Wireless is a substandard networking medium at best
2) Routing ethernet cables isn't rocket science
3) The majority of wireless hardware is Windows only
4) Buying Windows only hardware only encourages Windows only development
When I buy hardware I ensure there is opensource drivers available, I wont even go with binary supplied drivers anymore because they are a major pain in the ass. I will never use wireless for anything more than running around outdoors with a laptop, since I don't even like laptops that means I'll never use wireless. So the moral of the story is, Wireless sucks ass, don't use it. And binary (or worse yet, Windows) drivers sucks ass even moreso, so don't get that type of hardware and come bitching to the open source community because your shit propriatory locked hardware doesn't work (gasp horror, what a supprise). |
So because you don't need it no one else does......OH YEA and as someone else said it does work with ndiswrapper. You have to live in reality that you cannot always route cables to a machine so instead of trying your damndest to preach about how not to do the thing that would actually SOLVE things why not simply advocate applying the current solution that actually you know WORKS instead of trying to blame people for getting the hardware that actually gets the job done instead of pretending that in some cases inferior hardware is good because it happens to work with Linux natively.
Ive been trying to chase down the manufacturers for the various components for the laptop I want to buy off and on for the past few months and its been effectively impossible to find out all of the nessecary information about every single component that could be problematic namely the card reader and the internal bluetooth. Ive sat through forty minute sessions of we do not support linux while I am trying to find out the hardware manufacturers names and various specs like the refresh rate of the display which has a way of NEVER being listed for laptops even in the product manuals and its something that only someone who wants to use *nix on with the display ever needs to even ask about let alone even think about.
I'm not going to buy one of those weak Linux certified notebooks that doesn't have what I need just so I can fulfill some quasi religious need to support only linux when in all likelyhood only three pieces of hardware [really only two I managed to get the refresh rates of the model I had been loking at.] will cause me any difficulty besides I have my netgear which is more than capable of functioning appropriately for me through the use of ndiswrapper if by chance I cannot get the internal wireless to work properly with the *nix I choose to install on the hardware.
_________________
Ware wa mutekinari.
Wa ga kage waza ni kanau mono nashi.
Wa ga ichigeki wa mutekinari.
"First there was nothing, so the lord gave us light. There was still nothing, but at least you could see it."
Last edited by Shadow Skill on Tue Mar 14, 2006 12:10 am; edited 1 time in total |
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aidanjt
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| Posted: Tue Mar 14, 2006 12:05 am Post subject: |
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| Shadow Skill wrote: | | ...You have to live in reality that you cannot always route cables to a machine so instead of trying your damndest to preach about how not to do the thing that would actually SOLVE things why not simply advocate applying the current solution that actually you know WORKS instead of trying to blame people for getting the hardware that actually gets the job done instead of pretending that in some cases inferior hardware is good because it happens to work with Linux. |
blah blah blah blah... Give me ONE example of where you cannot route cat5, when you have 5" thick steel walls?.. the last time I checked microwaves can't pass through steel. Ethernet works in ALL situations, IS more cost effective, IS *MUCH* faster, IS MUCH more reliable, IS MUCH more secure, and IS actually scalable...
Just because you people are too lazy to a) plan a network correctly, b) understand the hardware you're about to buy, c) do a little cabling work.. All of a sudden everyone has to bend over backwards to accomodate for your laziness and outright stupidity. |
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Bad Penguin
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Posts: 507
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| Posted: Tue Mar 14, 2006 12:13 am Post subject: |
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| amne wrote: | | Bad Penguin wrote: | | Carelessly? Lets not get personal, you have no clue. |
Uhm, lol? You accuse me of getting personal because i use the term "carelessly"? Maybe it is some language problem because i not native speaker of English language, but i think in English language you say carelessly if someone does not make big heap care. Which you not did when buy wireless card at big shopping mall.
Even funnier you accuse me of having no clue in the same sentence. |
"Carelessly", as least as it translates to me, implies that I was either stupid, didn't research the problem, or was just too lazy to check before I bought. None of which are true statements. I did research which wireless cards would be compatible. As I explained above, the only store in my locale that carried the wireless pcmcia and pci cards didn't happen to have the cards listed on the compatibility lists. Almost all of the cards were rebranded and did not specify the chipset on the box. I don't know about where you live, but where I live they do not allow you to tear open the box at the store and eyeball the chipset on the cards themselves. It is a crapshoot until you can get the card in the box and do an lspci on it. And asking the "salespeople" if the cards are linux compatible, good luck. So no, it had nothing to do with me being careless, it has to do with what sells. Of course I would rather use cards that do not require windows drivers, but the reality is that they were not available. Not everyone lives around a Fryes or Egghead outlet, whatever.
So is it a crime that I would like to be able to use my crappy wireless card when booting from gentoo install media?
| amne wrote: | | So it's up to the Gentoo devs to fix your problems caused because Best Buy doesn't have cards that work properly and you still decided to buy them? |
No, it is not up to gentoo developers to fix every one of my problems. It is, however, not an unreasonable feature request. What I do expect is for gentoo developers to care enough about users to at least consider what they might ask for and want to satisfy them if they are reasonable requests.
| anme wrote: | | I clearly stated a lot of alternatives, i also stated why no one cares about putting a lot of effort into doing something that serves only a minority of users with a rather problematic attitude why it should be done in the first place. Of course it would be nice to have ndiswrapper on the Live CD, but the effort is much higher than the actual positive effects gained by it. The Gentoo devs have stated quite clearly they don't want to support ndiswrapper on the Live CD, so why can't you accept that and use one of the many Live CDs that already do? |
Hah hah, it's not like I have a choice one way or another. Don't worry, I am not crying over the fact that some gentoo developers are not jumping up to satisfy my every whim. I'm just responding to a poll in the forums. Yes, I would like ndiswrapper support on the release media. |
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Bad Penguin
Guru
Joined: 18 Aug 2004
Posts: 507
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| Posted: Tue Mar 14, 2006 12:22 am Post subject: |
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| AidanJT wrote: | | blah blah blah blah... Give me ONE example of where you cannot route cat5, when you have 5" thick steel walls?.. the last time I checked microwaves can't pass through steel. Ethernet works in ALL situations, IS more cost effective, IS *MUCH* faster, IS MUCH more reliable, IS MUCH more secure, and IS actually scalable... |
As a matter of fact, I live in a log home with solid 12x6 Canadian hemlock walls. I could tear off my roof and drill some wire runs if I was willing to spend about $50k to run wires up to my wife's gentoo workstation, fabricate a wiring closet, and set up patch panels. I chose option number 2, purchased a wireless router, a wireless pci card, and used ndiswrapper along with the installation cd that came with the card, about $100.00.
For some bizarre reason my office also uses wireless, as well as almost every hotel I have stayed at, McDonalds, and almost every cafe in my city. Freaking cheapskates. |
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stringbean
n00b
Joined: 17 Apr 2005
Posts: 9
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| Posted: Tue Mar 14, 2006 12:23 am Post subject: |
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So the official word from the devs is that ndiswrapper is evil, taints the livecd and is redundant as there are alternative solutions. Oh a we're morons for purchasing hardware that lacks Linux support... 
ndiswrapper has matured into a product that now works relatively well, is supported by most distros out of the the box and can be found on the livecd/install cd of almost every other distro out there. So why not on Gentoo? There cannot be any licensing issues with ndiswrapper as it is released under the GPL!
| fire-eyes wrote: | | The more linux distros support ndiswrapper, the less of a reason manufacturers have to support Linux. |
While there may be some truth in that statement you have to ask yourself this: Do they really care? Honestly, a hardware vendor that so far hasn't supported Linux, despite numerous requests, is extremely unlikely to think "oh they're using our Windows drivers under Linux, we don't have to release Linux drivers!", no they probably won't know/care either way.
I have two machines that I have had to install Gentoo on via a wireless connection: one has a Linksys card which will never have Linux drivers as Broadcom refuse to release them, this was purchased a number of years ago when getting a Linux supported card in the UK was virtually impossible. And the second machine is a Turion laptop which equally lacks Linux drivers and it doesn't look likely that it will get any soon. Both times I was forced to look elsewhere for a livecd.
No matter how much devs sit there and say that it is the users' fault or the hardware manufacturers' fault for having Linux unfriendly hardware, there will still be times when people need to install onto hardware that needs ndiswrapper. What kind of impression are people going to get when they try to install Gentoo onto a machine that needs ndiswrapper and all they get is "sorry about that, we didn't feel like sticking ndiswrapper on the CD. It's only a little piece of software but we don't like it so tough." ?
When I started using Gentoo a couple of years ago the message was of choice. The users could choose what they wanted and would be given a range of options. After reading this thread I am starting to think that the choice is the devs and not the users... |
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Shadow Skill
Veteran
Joined: 04 Dec 2004
Posts: 1023
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| Posted: Tue Mar 14, 2006 12:25 am Post subject: |
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Here is one the router may be up stairs where I cannot go because I am physically unable to walk upstairs or the box I need to actually need to work on happens to be upstairs where I cannot actually go because again I cannot actually walk up the stairs. If I had the ability to use wireless all I would have to do is have someone go upstairs pop in a live cd with some basic ssh setup and then I could quickly begin the installation process without having to have someone carry the whole box down to wear I am and then carry the box back up the stairs when the whole thing is done.
Better yet I have a server all the way on the otherside of my home you think I am going to route a 60 or 70 foot cable around my entire house which causes a great deal of inconvinience [having to watch thier step so they dont trip. ] to begin an installation when the intelligent thing to do would be to use a wireless connection that A does not need me to have someone drag that heavy ass box around the house for me since it can be left right where it needs to be without dissallowing me the ability to install what I need to install on the box?
_________________
Ware wa mutekinari.
Wa ga kage waza ni kanau mono nashi.
Wa ga ichigeki wa mutekinari.
"First there was nothing, so the lord gave us light. There was still nothing, but at least you could see it."
Last edited by Shadow Skill on Tue Mar 14, 2006 12:29 am; edited 1 time in total |
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slonocode
Apprentice
Joined: 03 Jun 2002
Posts: 273
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| Posted: Tue Mar 14, 2006 12:28 am Post subject: |
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| AidanJT wrote: |
blah blah blah blah... Give me ONE example of where you cannot route cat5, when you have 5" thick steel walls?.. the last time I checked microwaves can't pass through steel. Ethernet works in ALL situations, IS more cost effective, IS *MUCH* faster, IS MUCH more reliable, IS MUCH more secure, and IS actually scalable... |
Here's one example. You live in an apartment where drilling through walls isn't allowed.
But more importantly none of this is about whether wired is superior to wireless. The fact is that wireless is fast enough, reliable enough and secure enough.
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Just because you people are too lazy to a) plan a network correctly, b) understand the hardware you're about to buy, c) do a little cabling work.. All of a sudden everyone has to bend over backwards to accomodate for your laziness and outright stupidity. |
Wow. All I can say is that this statement shows where the stupidity lies. |
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Shadow Skill
Veteran
Joined: 04 Dec 2004
Posts: 1023
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| Posted: Tue Mar 14, 2006 12:33 am Post subject: |
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Aidan doesn't seem to understand is that if you setup a wireless router correctly no one will be able to hack you from across the street, hell if someone wanted to the could go ahead and try to tap you internet connection line directly all the have to do is dress up so that they look like they are doing some work nearby depending on just how the outside of your home is set up and where your line is actually locate underneath the ground.
_________________
Ware wa mutekinari.
Wa ga kage waza ni kanau mono nashi.
Wa ga ichigeki wa mutekinari.
"First there was nothing, so the lord gave us light. There was still nothing, but at least you could see it." |
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