NDISWRAPPER on the livecd

[Shadow Skill]

I'd definetly jump on something like that I'm having to tell myself not to even look at this lapdesk that has SLI in it. I am going to be so friggin broke come may.....[Trembles with anticipation of the new box running Gentoo or Freebsd or even both.. along with a very small windows partition for school and some games. ]

[HydroSan]

I'm still seeing no valid argument towards not putting ndiswrapper on the LiveCD.

It's probably because they're all OSS fascists who believe using Windows drivers in Linux is a heresey and thus refuse to do it, personally attacking every user which suggests it and then making wild accusations about how everyone is out to get them.

First they say "use another tool." Then someone says "then whats the point of Gentoo." Then the developers say "Well submit a patch and maintain it." People do and they get brushed off by developers saying "use another tool."

POSITIVE FEEDBACK AT ITS FINEST.

Anyways the developers are being complete idiots. Adding a module, even with a warning that "THIS MODULE IS UNSUPPORTED DO NOT FILE BUG REPORTS", seems to be beyond the developers' capacity. I guess I'll tell my professor the next time he wants to install Gentoo on his laptop that the reason he can't use his wireless card on install is because "the developers don't give a shit about you. Actually, they consider you to be a fucking idiot for buying a non-Linux compatible laptop, and that you should kill yourself because you suck so bad."

And then he'll get angry and kill himself later in the day.

Or, alternatively, use Ubuntu, which supports ndiswrapper out of the box.

Then Gentoo will lose market share.

Do you really want Gentoo to lose marketshare to a Debian knockoff? Do you really want a knockoff to be considered "better" than Gentoo?!

IF YOU DON'T SUPPORT NDISWRAPPER IN THE NEXT RELEASE, GENTOO WILL DIE.

[aidanjt]

I'm still seeing no valid argument towards not putting ndiswrapper on the LiveCD.

There's been over a dozen, you just havn't looked.

It's probably because they're all OSS fascists who believe using Windows drivers in Linux is a heresey and thus refuse to do it, personally attacking every user which suggests it and then making wild accusations about how everyone is out to get them.

As aposed to propriatory fascists (much like yourself)?, It is heresey, but that's not the reason why.. Go back and read through the forum properly and see why, I'm not going to rehash everything that's been said.

First they say "use another tool." Then someone says "then whats the point of Gentoo." Then the developers say "Well submit a patch and maintain it." People do and they get brushed off by developers saying "use another tool."

Tell me, what exactly.. is wrong with using an already existing tool which does the same job?.. give you ndiswrapper for during installation, why *MUST* Gentoo developers support ndiswrapper in its LiveCD?.. Considering the LiveCD is something you use for like 1 day tops, and then it sits gatthering dust for the next year or so.. Unless you make a habbit of breaking your system...

Anyways the developers are being complete idiots. Adding a module, even with a warning that "THIS MODULE IS UNSUPPORTED DO NOT FILE BUG REPORTS", seems to be beyond the developers' capacity.

And to think I got banned for using the term 'stupidity' in broad reference to people who do stupid things... Here you are exclaiming the developers are idiots directly.. As was said before, even if the LiveCD printed in a big massive red bold words "THIS MODULE IS UNSUPPORTED DONT FILE BUG REPORTS REGARDING WITH PROBLEMS TO THIS JUNK".. they would still get bug reports filed.. from people like you no doubt who want to force others to do work for you so you don't have to lift a finger.

I guess I'll tell my professor the next time he wants to install Gentoo on his laptop that the reason he can't use his wireless card on install is because "the developers don't give a shit about you. Actually, they consider you to be a fucking idiot for buying a non-Linux compatible laptop, and that you should kill yourself because you suck so bad."

Do you tell your professor how to brush his teeth as well?.. you seem to talk a lot about what you tell him.

And then he'll get angry and kill himself later in the day.

If I had to listen to your drivil all day I'd kill myself too.

Or, alternatively, use Ubuntu, which supports ndiswrapper out of the box.

You're absolutely *FREE* to use whatever *OPEN* solution you wish.

Then Gentoo will lose market share.

I don't think we'll miss much from people who move to Ubuntu.

Do you really want Gentoo to lose marketshare to a Debian knockoff? Do you really want a knockoff to be considered "better" than Gentoo?!

I care not.. at least the people who stick with Gentoo are the one's who actually help instead of whine all the time.

IF YOU DON'T SUPPORT NDISWRAPPER IN THE NEXT RELEASE, GENTOO WILL DIE.

I don't know how many times I've seen nonsense like that.

Now, are you finished trolling yet?

[HydroSan]

Now, are you finished trolling yet?

No.

*insert racial comment*

[pilla]

You aren't making your reasons any better just by saying you can't see the other side.

Likewise, you arent making the other side any better by not having any reasons.

Huh? Did you care to read all my other posts in this thread? I've stated clearly my position and never said the other side had no reasons.

IF YOU DON'T SUPPORT NDISWRAPPER IN THE NEXT RELEASE, GENTOO WILL DIE.

A profecy!

As kileber said, this thread has turned in a class A+ flamefest. If I was that much unsatisfied with a distribution as you seem to be, I'd simply go away. I did it before with other distros, always searching for the distro that better suited my needs.

[klieber]

IF YOU DON'T SUPPORT NDISWRAPPER IN THE NEXT RELEASE, GENTOO WILL DIE.

You forgot to mention that the terrorists will win, too. Don't forget the terrorists.

[brainiac_ghost]

i've been talking to chris on IRC, and he does have some very good resons

<wolf31o2-work> it really boils down to it being *impossible* for us to support something that uses *anything* from Windows...
<wolf31o2-work> while ndiswrapper might be GPL, the components it uses are not
<wolf31o2-work> opening up the release engineering team into a virtual support nightmare
<wolf31o2-work> and I'd rather tell users "no" on ndiswrapper than waste my time fielding *any* support for windows components

i see where they are getting at, it would be HELL to support, however when i get my gentoo install done, i will make a livecd which is just minimal + ndiswrapper

[Bad Penguin]

i've been talking to chris on IRC, and he does have some very good resons

<wolf31o2-work> it really boils down to it being *impossible* for us to support something that uses *anything* from Windows...
<wolf31o2-work> while ndiswrapper might be GPL, the components it uses are not
<wolf31o2-work> opening up the release engineering team into a virtual support nightmare
<wolf31o2-work> and I'd rather tell users "no" on ndiswrapper than waste my time fielding *any* support for windows components

i see where they are getting at, it would be HELL to support, however when i get my gentoo install done, i will make a livecd which is just minimal + ndiswrapper

What exactly is the problem including it on the media and not personally supporting it? And what exactly is the difference between "supporting" "windows components" and "supporting" other proprietary, non-gpl binaries that are already present on the media, such as nvidia, prism54-firmware, zd1201-firmware, ipw2100-firmware, and ipw2200-firmware?

wpa_supplicant is on the media, it supports using ndiswrapper, so why not "support" wpa_supplicant for us by including its runtime dependencies, one of which should be ndiswrapper.

[Shadow Skill]

Actually that makes no sense since Ndiswrapper is in Portage so you would think that this "problem" of support would appear [for the maintainer(s) of Ndiswrapper itself] anyway. If it has not appeared for them it does not follow logically that there would ever be a problem with troubleshooting ndiswrapper issues for the release engineering team. Besides bugs in the Ndiswrapper module should probably be fielded by the maintainer(s) of Ndiswrapper irrespective of whether or not it is on the installation media or not.

[Bad Penguin]

Kurt says Chris does not have to support it if he does not want to. I am fine with that, don't support it, just make it available for people who know how to use it.

That's the thing...you say this, yet you don't really mean it. Instead, you mean "make sure it works and is available" since, if it doesn't work, you're back to square one. Implicitly, you're also asking us/Chris to keep the package up to date, apply bug fixes, etc.

This is quite a disingenious statement, release engineering does not maintain nor support packages on the release media. The maintainer of ndiswrapper would keep the package up to date and apply bug fixes. It would be quite sufficient to add a blurb in the handbook stating "release engineering does not support use of ndiswrapper" and point bug reports to it.

amne was right when he said that, if it's on the livecd, users expect it to work. Doesn't matter if it's in /these/tools/are/totally/unsupported/don't/contact/us/if/they/don't/work directory....I guarantee we'll still get bug reports about it if it doesn't work. Now you're exactly where Chris doesn't want to be.

Well then perhaps Chris needs to get some help on the release engineering team. If he is overworked, he needs to recruit more help. If he can't get more help, you have a bigger problem on your hands.

Why the hell are the developers directly fielding the bug reports anyway? Why not do something like come up with a "Power Gentoo Users" group of people and let them do nothing other than try to filter/verify/duplicate/escalate bug reports? Anything has got to be better than a) subjecting users to intolerant overworked developers and b) subjecting developers to bug reports from less skilled users.

Again, I'm not saying that you guys shouldn't request features. By all means, you should. My point is simply that OSS is a different model -- you have to tweak someone's interest with your request enough to get them to donate their time towards making it happen. If that doesn't happen, then you're left with limited options, including doing it yourself. (which is why having the source is such a critical component of OSS development)

So in other words, if one individual developer does not like it, "feel like" doing it, or "have the time", users are just going to have to deal with it. This is a particularly sad state of affairs when you consider the fact that every user of gentoo's first experience is going to be with that installer.

You did make a suggestion earlier which I thought had merit; establishing a donation system whereby users could contribute to a tip jar to encourage devs to fix specific things/add specific features. That would certainly be something I'd support if someone wanted to put forth the idea to the general dev community and back it up with a working prototype.

Voting is a feature already present in bugzilla.

As far as voting with money take a look at this discussion on the kde-core-devel list. It is not a path without perils. I pledged $50 over two years ago to get a bug fixed and there has been very little progress on it for various reasons that have little to do with the actual developer. I believe the kde folks mistake was pledging money to developers instead of the project.

Of course, implementing a voting or donation system for the developers won't really change anything, if they are not responsive to what users want now (for whatever reason), a voting/donation system probably won't change much.

[NeddySeagoon]

This thread is loosing the whole OSS plot.

There is no us (users) and them (devs) - its single a community. Of course devs will do what they are interested in before any other things, thats human nature. Devs are users with an interest in contributing to projects.

If you want to use ndiswrapper from the liveCD, its not difficult - the process is well documented, on the first page of this thread and other places.

Getting back to the single community aspect - don't winge about what dev do/dont do, play a more active role in your community - fix it yourself. Host and unsupported liveCD, advertise it in the Unsupported Software forums and fix the bugs as they roll in.

[klieber]

It would be quite sufficient to add a blurb in the handbook stating "release engineering does not support use of ndiswrapper" and point bug reports to it.

That's your opinion and I respect that. I happen to disagree with it, so let's just agree to disagree.

So in other words, if one individual developer does not like it, "feel like" doing it, or "have the time", users are just going to have to deal with it. This is a particularly sad state of affairs when you consider the fact that every user of gentoo's first experience is going to be with that installer.

Pretty much. Something other than money has to motivate the developer into donating his time to make it happen. However, you're only representing one side of the equation. The part you're leaving out is where you have the power to donate your time to do anything you want with the installation CD. You have the source and the license to support these efforts, yet you are making the choice to not spend your time to add the feature. Why are you so upset that someone else is making the same choice?

--kurt

[aidanjt]

Pretty much. Something other than money has to motivate the developer into donating his time to make it happen. However, you're only representing one side of the equation. The part you're leaving out is where you have the power to donate your time to do anything you want with the installation CD. You have the source and the license to support these efforts, yet you are making the choice to not spend your time to add the feature. Why are you so upset that someone else is making the same choice?

Maybe he think's trying to force others to add features he wants is a better use of his time.

[slycordinator]

I find it astounding that you guys are going "haha None of you are willing to donate your time" despite the fact that people have already offered to test an experimental cd.

[Bad Penguin]

Pretty much. Something other than money has to motivate the developer into donating his time to make it happen. However, you're only representing one side of the equation. The part you're leaving out is where you have the power to donate your time to do anything you want with the installation CD. You have the source and the license to support these efforts, yet you are making the choice to not spend your time to add the feature. Why are you so upset that someone else is making the same choice?

Gee, where should I start?

First of all, it has not upset me all that much that someone else has not made the choice to add the feature. What is "upsetting", your word not mine, is that a simple feature request is treated with such contempt, and utter bullshit excuses and reasons are given for not considering it. This is by far not the first time I have seen this behavior. Fine, if you are just too damned lazy and unconcerned, if you are too busy doing other things, just say so. Don't give me lame bullshit excuses like "release engineering does not want to add patches and support the software". They don't support the actual packages on the release media unless it happens to be something like catalyst. I won't even delve into the numerous inane comments here by others about it's your fault you bought the wrong hardware, blah blah.

Which brings me to the second issue "upsetting me". I did attempt to generate a livecd with it. Using the exact same spec files, stages, and catalyst version as release engineering, the only thing I did different was a current snaphost because snapshots from January 2006 are not easy to come by right at the moment. Catalyst won't build shit with those spec files. It chokes on -mtune=i686. I tried building from every stage and just simply adding net-wireless/ndiswrapper to the livecd stage1 spec file. I wasted upwards of 40 hours trying to get the piece of junk to work, and it just won't. I have no idea how release engineering really gets those stages/media built, or what is really in them for that matter, since I can't duplicate the build. I was attempting to build the release media with ndiswrapper so I could in fact test it first, perhaps right up some documentation for it, etc... After 40+ hours of fooling with that piece of junk I got too damned fed up and just made a feature request.

In all fairness it probably is not the fault of catalyst, it had to do with stupid shit like man-pages not being able to install because eutils attempts to add a group before groupadd is installed (manually installing shadow made no difference). The bottom line is that the damn thing just doesn't work, at least not for me. I would love to see anyone get those specs to generate any stage successfully.

So no, I don't really have the "power" to do jack when the tools are so damned broken. So yeah, I'm a little frustrated, can't get it to work with catalyst, and the developer(s) sure as hell are not going to add it.

[klieber]

I find it astounding that you guys are going "haha None of you are willing to donate your time" despite the fact that people have already offered to test an experimental cd.

Test != Create

[aidanjt]

...Catalyst won't build shit with those spec files. It chokes on -mtune=i686. I tried building from every stage and just simply adding net-wireless/ndiswrapper to the livecd stage1 spec file...

Perhaps it choked because you're using -mtune instead of -mcpu, actually you should be using -march since it's value implies mtune/mcpu and also unlocks sub-arch specific options.

[SirYes]

Oh, come on, people. I use ndiswrapper on my laptop since I bought it. The only trouble I really went into is that for some kernel upgrades I needed to emerge the newest, ~x86-ed ndiswrapper. Otherwise no real problems for almost a year on my side - and that's for 2.6.[12,13,14,15] kernels and ndiswrapper-1.[2,7,8].

My observation is that ndiswrapper needs to be on par with the kernel that's used to boot the machine. So, for every release of the livecd it should be checked if the current/planned combination works. It's not THAT big amount of work, but it's not a ZERO work at the same time.

I understand the points of both sides (pro-ndiswrapper users and anti-ndiswrapper developers), but not having it on the livecd renders Gentoo lacking another bit when compared to other distributions. Suggesting that one should use a livecd from another distribution BECAUSE it contains ndiswrapper underlines the fact that the other distribution's developers took care to include it, while Gentoo dev's did not. Paraphrasing Monty Python, it's like farting in the general direction of the Gentoo users.

well, maybe that's not as positive as it could be, but it's my personal POV

Edit: Anyway, the dreaded ndiswrapper is just ONE kernel module. No more, no less. Why do you object it so much?

[Bad Penguin]

...Catalyst won't build shit with those spec files. It chokes on -mtune=i686. I tried building from every stage and just simply adding net-wireless/ndiswrapper to the livecd stage1 spec file...

Perhaps it choked because you're using -mtune instead of -mcpu, actually you should be using -march since it's value implies mtune/mcpu and also unlocks sub-arch specific options.

I didn't touch the cflags, I left them at the same defaults that the official release media were built with. I assume catalyst generates the cflags automatically from the subarch in the spec file. I used the exact same stage3 to generate the stage1 because I wanted to duplicate the stages/livecds exactly, only with a recent snapshot. The exact error messages were coming from cc1 and the error message indicated the compiler didn't understand the '-tune=i686' flag, when the actual flag was -mtune=i686. Don't know what that was all about. I was able to use the 2006 stage3 later instead of the 2005.1-r1, made it through stage2, stage3 bombed and would not fix. Tried using the 2006.0 stage3 to generate the livecd-stage1 instead of starting from stage1, it bombed on the same thing. Enough was enough, it won't work.

If it worked for release engineering with the exact same stage, cflags, and spec file, it should have worked for me.

It didn't bomb on every package by the way, just certain ones, libperl if I recall correctly.

[slycordinator]

If anyone cares to know I actually am trying to make a livecd w/ ndiswrapper but am having catalyst fail.

It keeps on trying to emerge pam-login even though it's blocked by shadow.

[sonicbhoc]

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.

how would you know if I have a laptop?

I have a piece-of-crap 3 year old gray fugly Compaq box that weighs a ton, and no room to put it on my dad's computer desk. Believe me, I've tried. He got pissed and said to never do it again!

I can't drill holes through my wall. Screw that.

I don't have a cord that goes from the downstairs to my upstaris room. Screw that.

I don't even know if you can install ndiswrapper on the CD, because I don't think it has the source code on it. SCREW THAT TOO.

Now what am I going to do? I'm not going to waste time building an out-dated system, and then building it again. Building a system twice is NOT on my agenda. And soon, I'll be getting a brand-spankin new desktop. And it's not going to fit on my dad's table either. So what do I do now? I'm sunk!

[NeddySeagoon]

sonicbhoc,

You can build and maintain a Gentoo system with no networking whatsoever. You need to use sneakernet for the updates.
You do not build very much twice if you opt for the networkless install, add ndiswrapper and then update, in any case, to maintain your system, you will be doing updates, so its no extra effort.

I've outlined the sneakernet approach on page 1 of this thread.

[aidanjt]

sonicbhoc,

You can build and maintain a Gentoo system with no networking whatsoever. You need to use sneakernet for the updates.
You do not build very much twice if you opt for the networkless install, add ndiswrapper and then update, in any case, to maintain your system, you will be doing updates, so its no extra effort.

I've outlined the sneakernet approach on page 1 of this thread.

And even if he wanted to a network install he can use a knoppix livecd and get the same end result. Honestly folks the LiveCD can't be all things to all people, there's only so much that can be put on a CD.

[slycordinator]

So I've figured out what went wrong with catalyst before. Seems the stage tarball I was using already has pam-login installed and then the chroot script for catalyst was trying to upgrade it and it fscked because the newest shadow version blocks pam-login.

So I "fixed" it by unpacking my stage tarball somewhere, bind-mounting proc, dev, and portage then chrooted & removed pam-login. Then I unmounted stuff I mounted before and repacked the tarball.

And it no longer gave that message so I assume it worked. Though, the final install will have to wait as I work the next couple days and have an anatomy final. So after that stuff is done, I'll (hopefully) be able to make an x86 livecd that has ndiswrapper (sorry don't have any 64-bit to test).

Once I have the thing built I'll have to find a way to get the iso to someone else that can test it (as I don't have a wireless card to test w/). I'm just trying to get this "off the ground" so I don't have to worry when I build a comp sometime that I know will have wireless.

[pilla]

Now what am I going to do? I'm not going to waste time building an out-dated system, and then building it again. Building a system twice is NOT on my agenda. And soon, I'll be getting a brand-spankin new desktop. And it's not going to fit on my dad's table either. So what do I do now? I'm sunk!

Use another approach, like a LiveCD from another distro. If you read the entire thread, you'll find how.