[Techtalk] Changing Hardware in Linux

[Akkana]

/dev/null writes:
> yup, mandrake has redhat's Kudzu, which does a pretty good job of 
> autodetecting and configuring most things (except obscure soundcards 
> like mine ;-)....

I remember when I first added a network card to my home machine
(before that I'd only used a modem at home).  It was a dual-boot
machine.  I installed the card, turned it on, booted Redhat (7.1,
I think that was), kudzu came up and took me through a set of network
configuration screens, and I was up and running.  (Fortunately it
was a generic tulip-compatible card, no driver issues.)

Then I rebooted into Windows 98.  It, too, detected the card, asked me
whether to search for a driver.  I said yes.  It said it needed to
install some software from the Windows disk (networking), I said okay.
It said it couldn't find a driver for the card and bombed out.
I booted the rest of the way and spent half an hour going through
setup, uninstall and reinstall of every network-related component
I could think of, etc.  Somewhere along the way, something important
got removed (I wasn't removing single files, just using Windows'
built-in software install/remove) and it wouldn't boot any more.
I tried to boot off the win98 CD and patch up the installation, but
it said it couldn't find the windows installation.  I took a deep breath
and tried to reinstall windows from scratch: the installer bombed out
partway through (I tried two or three times, it died earlier each time).
My fiance had a win me disk he wasn't using and I tried to install that:
it died early in the process too.

It took two weeks of fiddling, but eventually Dave got the machine
running again: if I remember correctly, it involved installing win me
on a fresh disk on one of his machines, then using linux to copy from
that disk onto my disk mounted on his machine, then moving the disk
back to my machine.

Throughout the ordeal, linux booted fine and worked great with the
network card (so whatever windows' problem was, it wasn't a hardware
failure on the machine).

People are always telling me how linux isn't ready for the desktop
because it's so much harder than linux to use.  Where do I get some
of what they're smoking?  (Actually, I think what they're smoking is
some of that "never personally tried installing either one" weed.)

	...Akkana