Hi All,
As many as seven responders, as many as 10 posts, to my laments.
Thanks for taking the time. I had even warned that it would be a useless
post to many.
Here are my consolidated responses. No offence meant guys. I am only looking
the proverbial gift horse in the mouth....
Ramprakash -- Congrats on your unconventional approach to the CD problem.
Know how I solved it? I just went ahead and purchased a fresh set from
PCQuest (the other was my friend's). So, between the two sets, we could
manage one good set. I was not complaining about bad media. I was
complaining about the unfriendly error it reported, without even giving me a
way to exit gracefully!!
Sanjay -- You are right Sanjay. One must have looked before leaping. But,
unlike many others, who have nobler thoughts like contributing active code
to the community, or hating Windows, or loving Linux, or wanting to
experiment, etc, I was driven purely by the base motive of wanting to use
only clean/legal software from now on. The piracy/illegal ghosts have
started really haunting me, and I don't want to go back again to 50 rupee
software cds from the platform at Ritchie street. Probably, eventually, the
other ghost of being an open-source/freesoftware parasite might eventually
raise its head to haunt me, but I will face that when it comes, and I
already have plans of how to give back to this community in cash and kind. I
will make a separate post on my hardware configs, and see if you can help
me. Thanks again.
Raman -- Dear Sir, please don't compare the experiences I had with Linux
with the experiences you had with Windows. Firstly, I am sure mine is much
more common than yours. Secondly, let us clean up our act first rather than
compare with something decidedly inferior and bring down our own software's
image in doing so. Thirdly, just because Windows gave you trouble, doesn't
mean I can't crib about Linux installation trouble!!
Also, while I might send a mail to the soundcard manufacturer, do you think
he will really care for us 1percent? I was only suggesting that with the
limited resources we have in our hands, our prime focus, (if we are
interested in going beyond infinitesimal minority into sizeable
marketshare), must be to ensure as many people get on to the environment in
the first place. Just think about it. How many interfaces and desktop
environments and GUIs have the linux community spawned? (Oneupmanship?)
Couldn't this have been channelized better in ensuring impatient nitwits
like me get beyond the installer instead?
And, finally, one interesting observation about your win-xp and win98 and
other winbased nightmares. Somehow, windows / Microsoft seems to have struck
a right decision, in that, they end up supporting most of the latest
hardware, and the only misses usually happens with incompatible OLD
hardware. On the other hand, probably because of the very nature of the open
source development effort, we are still playing catchup, most of the old
hardware is beautifully supported, but the latest stuff (that one usually
ends up buying, by the way!!) ends up in the unsupported list. :-(
Suraj -- Thanks for your mandrake tip. (He was my favourite indrajal comic
character too!) Do you have a mandrake distribution that I can try out at
my home? Checked out their website. It says Try/Buy. Does it mean I gotta
pay? This is not a FREE distribution? I don't understand. Can you clarify?
Kannan Krishnan -- Your suggestion on starting my own project to write the
driver, yes, good idea, but unfortunately I don't consider myself a
driver-programmer. This is something that I am starting to fear of the Linux
Open Source Community. We don't seem to give credence to the fact that we
are not all programmers. Some are great designers. Some are process-gurus.
Some write great documentation. Some do excellent testing. Some are superb
product visionaries. Point is, we need each one of them. Assuming that
nobody has the right to "raise a voice", and answering him with "cook your
own food" might end up making us all great at the kitchen, but then, who
will tend to the children, who will clean the garden, who will bring in the
moolah, and so on?? Like I said earlier, I know my strengths (and
weaknesses), and I am proud of them. I am even confident that I will not end
up being an open-source-parasite (hey, you guys have a nick/jargon for such
people? There must be many!!) and that I will have solid contributions to
make to this community, but in my own way, using my own skills. But no, I
don't intend to write my own driver. :-(
Sajith -- I was touched by your response. You truly imbibe the Open Source
Spirit I feel, and I hope I won't let you down. Two things:- Can you point
me to some good websites / document sources that talk about this rationale
and philosophy behind the existence of Free Software? And, can you direct me
to some members in this group who have done active contribution back to the
community (other than in spreading the word and the gospel)? I would like to
meet them. Are you one of them?
Joe Steve -- In an interesting coincidence, Joe, I am actually looking at
recruiting a PHP-programmer with enough spunk to really tweak
hardware/software setups in a LAMP environment. A friend of mine, Sampath,
(colleague and member of ilugc too) had actually posted an ad in this forum.
I am yet to find a match for that. The request is still open.
Joe Steve -- You have a valid point about my engineers. Probably they are
only better than me, but still not good enough. Also, like you say, each one
of you have a working system because you cared to figure it out. I am
probably only being impatient, but then, I have this added problem that none
of you probably have. I have just two days ago, forsaken and renounced all
pirated software and illegal programs, against stiff opposition and
discouragement from wellwishers and friends. They said I was impractical,
they said I was trying the impossible, they said I was going nowhere, they
said I would come battered and bruised back to their fold in less than three
days, and I braved it all. So, I am not a knowledgeable fighter here to
enjoy the war, I am a trying-to-be-clean guy using the only route (however
thorn-ridden) that I know of. Probably the only solution might be that I
should quit this dirty profession of software and computers itself!! :-(
Rajendran.
Email:- rajendran@xxxxxxxxxx
Blog:- http://tippingcup.rediffblogs.com
Ryze:- http://www.ryze.com/go/rajendran
