http://bakeyournoodle.com/~tony/diary Tony's Diary en Thu, 27 Oct 2005 13:12:00 http://bakeyournoodle.com/~tony/diary/2005/10/27#20051027 I was asked on the bus today[1] &quot;So like Linux huh? Why?&quot;, well words to that effect anyway. I was about to enter into a brain dump on Opensource but decided to relate a story instead. </p> <p> While a number of years elapsed between the first and second events I think it's still interesting. </p> <p> Event 1:<br /> 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. </p> <p> Event 2:<br /> 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. </p> <p> 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. </p> <p> I'll let you all get back to work now. </p> <p> [1] insert witty comment about my dress sense, I didn't think the Tux was even visible<br /> [2] Yes I have windows on computers at home.<br /> [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.<br /> Thu, 13 Oct 2005 09:02:00 http://bakeyournoodle.com/~tony/diary/2005/10/13#20051013 Today my ride was made complete when I saw the (it looked like the same duck </kbd>;p</kdb>) mother duck and her ducklings at the same spot, just on the other side of the creek. Mon, 10 Oct 2005 07:22:00 http://bakeyournoodle.com/~tony/diary/2005/10/10#20051010 For the last week or so, when riding to/from ANU, I've been attacked (for some value of attacked) by a mother duck, protecting her very cute ducklings. Yesterday, the grass was mown, today no ducks! I hope they moved on.