SPAM: [TAG] Using Broadcom Wifi with Linux

[Benjamin A. Okopnik]

On Tue, Nov 09, 2004 at 09:18:59AM -0500, Tom Brown wrote:
>
> Thanks for the help. From the feedback I'm getting it looks like I'm 
> going to have to move to the 2.6 kernel, which I really don't want to 
> do. Of course, moving to the 2.6 kernel puts me behind the eight-ball 
> when it comes to running Win4Lin. I really wish the folks supporting 
> Linux didn't assume the users were all rocket scientists. It's like 
> forcing someone to learn how to re-build the engine and transmission 
> just to drive a car.

Well, no, Tom. It's like "forcing" someone to learn to put in their own
gas and oil where they had attendants to do it previously. The cost of
fuel goes down to nearly zero, but talking about that doesn't help
emphasize your frustration with the absence of those attendants, so it
gets conveniently swept under the rug.

You're not being asked to learn anything horribly difficult. I've
compiled several nVidia drivers in the past, and none of them required
any "special compilers and libraries" as you mentioned previously;
perhaps in your case it required *upgrading* your compiler and libraries
to the current version, which is far from the same thing (but, again,
stating it fairly doesn't make your case. Whoosh! - goes the broom...)
Recompiling the kernel is a matter of a few seconds of tweaking followed
by issuing one or two simple commands, all things easily learned and
information trivially found from many resources - but it's easier to
complain about it than do it, right?

If you don't want to do what you say you need to do, that's a personal
problem having nothing to do with Linux. Grousing about Linux in _this_
forum, particularly if that grousing is based on unwillingness to exert
yourself a little, will not get you much in a way of sympathy -
especially after people have extended themselves to help you. Being
insulting to the people who have given you the result of their efforts
and asked for nothing except your recognition and respect will get you a
lot less than sympathy.


* Ben Okopnik * okopnik.freeshell.org * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette *
-*- See the Linux Gazette in its new home: <http://linuxgazette.net> -*-