[ale] I cant get my modem im running linux for the first time

[Joseph A Knapka]

Jim Philips wrote:
> 
> Well, who hasn't had a lover's quarrel with the kernel? I just had a
> knock-down, drag-out fight with my Red Hat distro. I knew there was a
> reason I didn't rush out and upgrade to 7.2. But when PAM went crazy,
> there was no way I could log in to any mode other than single user. So,
> a nuke and pave was the only way out. Along the way, I had to deal with
> Red Hat's asinine setup for xfs. Then there were the network setup
> tools, which did more harm than good. And the upgrade somehow just
> deleted two directories under my home directory: rhdocs and mp3.
> Apparently, those are reserved names. So, it just destroyed them. In the
> process, I lost 123 mp3 files and about 40 valuable word processing
> docs. The most traumatic upgrade I've had in six years of using Linux.

My take on this is that users can get just as frustrated with
Linux (or any of the BSD's, etc) as they can with Windows. And
often, in that situation, the easiest way out is to "nuke and
pave" (nice phrase!). But with an open-source OS, you at least
have the possibility of *educating* yourself out of the problem,
or at least finding out (possibly via someone else who's done
the self-education part) *why* things went pear-shaped, so you
can avoid the problem in future. I don't think I've ever had
the same Mysterious Problem (TM) twice under Linux, and as
I get more experience, the incidence of new Mysterious Problems
decreases.

I've lost count of the number of times I've had to reinstall
Windows because some miscellaneous bizarre symptom kept me
from getting work done -- and when it happens again, I *still*
have no freakin' idea why, and my sole recourse is *still* to
nuke and pave. What a ripoff.

Cheers,

-- Joe

> On Mon, 2001-12-31 at 12:51, Matt Shade wrote:
> > I have to apologize for that remark. I was up half the night dealing with a
> > screwed up kernel and modules regen, and the whole time, I was working fine
> > on my Win2k box. I was a little peeved with Linux at the time, and my
> > fingers got the better of me.
> >
> > There's something to be said about walking away for a little while, then
> > coming back. Both for my dumb post, and for working with kernel source.
> >
> >
> > matt
> 
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-- 
"I should like to close this book by sticking out any part of my neck
 which is not yet exposed, and making a few predictions about how the
 problem of quantum gravity will in the end be solved."
 --- Physicist Lee Smolin, "Three Roads to Quantum Gravity"

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