Thu, 27 Oct 2005
Why I use Linux
I was asked on the bus today[1] "So like Linux huh? Why?", well
words to that effect anyway. I was about to enter into a brain dump on
Opensource but decided to relate a story instead.
While a number of years elapsed between the first and second events I think it's still interesting.
Event 1:
When 100Mb networking was new, I had an occasion to
buy a brand spanking new server, I did my research and purchased a machine
(and more importantly PCI NIC) that was supported by the kernel(I think it was
a 1.3 kernel, but it may have in fact been 2.0).
It was with much
sadness that I discovered that under Linux there was no networking to be had,
The hardware detected a link etc but I got strange error messages which are
lost in time now.
It seems that the NIC I had has a different chip revision than the ones
currently supported. After a little to'ing and fro'ing with Donald Becker,
the card chipset was now supported. I think it took 2 days to get the card
going. I was happy. The server was in production for close to 7 years before
it finally became too old to perform it's task as was replaced.
Event 2:
My Wife needed a new machine. We settled on a name brand desktop system. It
wasn't the biggest baddest machine but it was more than adequate. Got the
box home set it up and all was good. Soon I decided to un-retire some old
games, all was good until one game would lock up and eventually BSOD[2].
I did
the windows driver shuffle to no avail. Contacted the game vendor, never got
a response. Contacted the hardware vendor, was told to run the recovery DVD
and that would fix things. I knew this was bogus, rang back in about 35mins
said I still had the same problem. I was told it had to be a problem with
the software and that they couldn't help. Not really the response I wanted.
I took the unprecedented (for me) step of filing a bug report with Microsoft.
Which was literally as easy as clicking a button.
This resulted in a nice web page in which Microsoft claimed that this was a
known bug with the soundcard and I should contact the vendor for help.
Actually this seemed like a good diagnosis. If I completely turned off
sound in the game (fortunately I could edit a .ini file to do this) the game
worked albeit silently. I recontacted the vendor with this new information
and was told to run the recovery DVD. Oh dear. I admit at this point I gave
up, it'd been more than a month
since I started this. It was something like 8 months later I once again got
bored enough to try things. I checked the vendors support site and saw that
there were updated drivers available for the box, and they'd only been released
3 days ago. I got brave and tried them. Lo and behold I could now
play the game, it's a shame it only took 9 months to get there.
So to my way of thinking, this illustrates the good things with Linux. If it doesn't work someone will be able to help, even if they're on the other side of the world working for NASA, with the other OS, not so much[3]. Now It's possible that I may have biased the outcome of the events with pre-conceived notions about the outcomes but I don't think so. I don't know if this help the person on the bus, or if it was just a way for them to pass a boring bus ride in Canberra.
I'll let you all get back to work now.
[1] insert witty comment about my dress sense, I didn't think the Tux was even
visible
[2] Yes I have windows on computers at home.
[3] I should note that I did try manufacturer (as opposed to vendor) drivers,
contacted other players of the game involved and used both manufacturer and
vendor forums/newsgroups to try and find a solution.
