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So What Now (was RE: FW 2] ethernet card)




This message has 3 parts 
1 - an answer to Yedidya who tried to help
2 - a new attempt I made that is frustrating me even more
3 - and lastly, I guess you could call it letting off steam, but I'll
tell you why I'm thinking of giving up. So anyone who doesn't want to
read this **tirade** can skip it, but I honestly think that if LINUX is
going to succeed, these problems have to be addressed.


PART 1

On 22-Mar-2000 Yedidya Bar-david wrote:
> 1. You can try to compile it into the kernel, and not as a module.
> The order of probing can be important, and the kernel knows about it.
I'll try that if nothing else works, but it looks like too much trouble
- see part 3 of this message below.

> 2. Does the IRQ and IO port it uses (10 and 0x300, you say) seem to
> be
> used, before you insmod it? you can see that by
> 'cat /proc/{interrupts,ioports}'.
they were free

> 3. Did you try 'insmod eepro io=0x300 irq=10' ?
That didn't help. running cat /proc/{interrupts,ioports} again after
that showed the io was now used but the IRQ not. 

> 4. If you have spare IRQs, and the card is configurable (by jumpers
> or software), you can try to change irq/io port.
It's not, but to be honest, I probably wouldn't change it even if I
could since, at least for the present, I don't want to screw up the way
the card works under WIN98 and DOS since as much as I do want to
finally use LINUX, so far, I still can't give up my WIN98 network.



PART 2


I decided to **steal** a noname PCI ethernet card from one of my other
machines and try it instead of the INTEL ISA card. On booting, Mandrake
discovered the card and correctly configured it (just as in WIN98 where
it's recognized as RealTek). I was asked if I wanted to setup
networking and I answered **YES**. To make a long story short, on three
attempts, the configuration prograam locked up the computer. I finally
decided to edit the configuration files manually and discovered that
apparently the configuration program was not smart enough to know what
to do with the old IRQ and IO settings and this was crashing the
machine. 

So I got everything setup (at least I thought), but when I try to PING
192.168.0.1 (which is how I set up the machine), I still get Network is
unreachable. This is really frustrating.


PART 3

Why I'm about ready to give up on LINUX and why you (or anyone who
cares about the future of LINUX) should care.

Let me make one thing clear. I do want to use LINUX and all the
criticism that follows is part of my frustration with not being able
to. I'm sure LINUX is more stable and **better** in countless ways than
the competition. When it is running, there are alot of great things
about it. But there's a limit to how much time I can waste and
how much
frustration I can take.

First a bit about my computer use history so you'll realize that I'm
not a beginner and don't give up easily. I've worked on computers for 18
years. I even had a Sinclair Spectrum (32k) nearly 20 years ago. Most
of the PCs I've had over the years have been machines that I either
built myself from parts or made many changes and upgrades to the
hardware. I used to lurk the BBSs long before INTERNET became a
household word and when I got my first modem (2400 bps), people used 
to ask what a modem is. For years, I've been the unofficial PC guru
where I work, and the fellows who are in charge of upkeep on the
computers often come to me when they don't know the answers.

I used WINDOWS even before version 3.0, but the more I used it, the
more I realized there must be a better way !!!! So about 8 years ago, I
installed OS/2 and that's been my OS ever since. In fact, until a
few months ago, I never installed WIN95 or WIN98 on my home machines.

I've been planning to move to LINUX for about three years and for
various reasons, kept putting it off. I've been **lurking** on this
list for years, I go to all the LINUX events at **ganei hatarucha**,
etc. When I bought a new Pentium 500 recently, I decided the time
has come.

I installed RedHat 6.0 but heard about Mandrake 7.0 being so good so I
re-formatted and started over. I planned to use this machine as a
LINUX only machine. Ever since, I've had too many problems. The ironic
thing is that since I've had so many problems, I installed WIN98 so I
could use the machine for some useful work until I get the problems
solved. In case I was not clear here, let me explain again. After
resisting WIN95 and WIN98 for so many years, my problems with LINUX
drove me to install WIN98 !!!!!! 

I don't expect LINUX to be as easy or friendly as WIN98 and I have no
problem with RTFM, but after reading LINUX Unleashed (1200 pages),
the Linux Newbie Administrator Guide (a great book from LDP), Linux
System Administrators Guide, GNOME users guide, KDE users guide, RedHat
users guide, Mandrake users guide, and countless HOWTO's and man pages,
I should know how to set up a simple network that took minutes to set up
in Windows with almost no reading or preparation. 

But that's not my only problem. I wrote the list a few times about my
CDRW problem. After about a month with no solution, I decided to look on
Usenet, which I hate because you have to wade through so much garbage
there. But after a couple of hours of searching, I found messages from
others who had similar problems. And after writing them directly, I
finally got help. BTW - the problem (if anyone is interested) involved
a bug in the Mandrake 7.0 setup which caused a conflict between the
ide-scsi emulation and the ATAPI support in the kernel so the solution
was to remove ATAPI support from the kernel and recompile. Of course
this created an additional problem since I also have a 48x CD-ROM which
needed the ATAPI support, but that was easy to solve be editing
/etc/fstab to mount the CD-ROM as if it was also SCSI. I'm only telling
you all this to make the point that in the meantime, I had no choice
but to install the CDRW in WIN98 so I could use it. The whole
installation proces took 5 minutes !!!!!!! Compare this to the month of
searching and finally having to compile a kernel and edit some
configuration files. 

Hebrew support is a real mess. I don't usually need Hebrew on the
INTERNET, but I decided to try adding Hebrew to NETSCAPE. The links on 
the IGLU page lead you to a page on IOL about Hebrew LINUX support, But
the page itself is in Hebrew so of course I couldn't read the damn
thing. I decided to forget about Hebrew support for Netscape for now. 

If I ever get my network set up, my next project is to get my fax modem
working again. On OS/2 or WIN98, it's a matter of a few minutes to set
up. But after reading documentation, man pages, and HOWTOs for
mgetty+sendfax, fax, efax, gfax, xfax, kfax, ksendfax, viewfax,
mgetty_fax, faxrunq, faxq, faxspool, and a few others, I'm starting to
wonder if it's all worthwhile :-(. After all, even if I do set up the
fax, I'll end up with a program that while probably more reliable than
a Windows app will probably have only half (or less) the features of
something like WINFAX, etc.

OK - so let my summarize - I'm a computer profesional and hobbiest with
alot of years of experience. I'm sure there are alot of people out
there who are smarter than me and are running LINUX smoothly, but still,
if I can't get LINUX running properly, the average newbie has nearly no
chance. The fact that after spending days, hours, and nights on LINUX,
I'm nearly ready to give up is a problem for me. But my reasons are
IMHO really bad news for the LINUX community, and in fact for all
computer users.
 
//-------------------------
Shlomo Solomon
E-Mail: solomon@barak-online.net
http://come.to/shlomo.solomon
Date: 23-Mar-2000   Time: 10:00:38

Message sent by XFMail on a LINUX Mandrake 7.0 machine
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