[Techtalk] "I need to use Windows because ..."

[Conni]

On Aug 11, Suzi Anvin conjectured:

> > Toshiba and IBM laptops and got everything working relatively
> > painlessly.
> 
> No dear, it sucks to the kernel hacker I'm married to, and several 
> other's I've spoken to.  It's something I know is in active development 
> for future kernel updates.  It is just, due to the nature of open source 
> and the moving targets of laptop firmware, fundamentally a difficult 
> field for open source.

I've had a bazillion problems getting RH7.2 to work on my VAIO SR-77.  I
can't get Divx/aviplay to work at all - even with someone else's
completely functional libraries and setup copied onto my disk in the right
place.  When I play mpeg videos, the audio and video aren't in sync.  The
console screen (the login prompt, before I startx) takes up a small subset
of my display.  I can't get the jog wheel working, the function-f# keys
don't do anything, there's no apm support (which I recently learned why:
to get the made for XP sticker, there must be no apm support; only acpi.)
I can't hotswap USB devices (there's a program called hotplug, I hear).
gPhoto crashes.  I don't have a camera device (even when booting the
computer and running kudzu, which makes the USB recognize things) as far
as I can tell.  I try to configure gPhoto, and it gives a permission error
and crashes.

Then there's the problem I have with getting my Palm sync working on my
other computer - it's serial, and nothing is recognizing the cradle.  So I
just give up and sync on my husband's Mac.

I love my laptop, but there are a lot of things I can't get it to do.

Conni

-- 
So take those photographs and still-frames in your mind; hang it on a
shelf in good health and good time.
			-Green Day

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