Linux and hardware
I installed Mandrake on my laptop yesterday. I don’t know why it took me so long to finally scrap Windows XP on my laptop.Can it be the lousy support for D-Link wireless adapters? Yes – that might be it. But then I read somewhere out there on that oh so almighty internet that, with a bit of a hassle, one should be able to get it to work. Well – I couldn’t. Windows XP will soon be back on my laptop.
For some weird reason I always seem to end up with hardware not supported. I should have kept that in mind before buying my DWL G650+ wireless adapter from D-Link. There is support for both the G650 revision A and B – but not for the one with the plus attached to the end of the name.
Why do I always forget to check that the hardware I buy is supported? A year and a half ago I bought myself a new digital camera. Everything I read about it had the same message – Pentax Optio RS430 is a great camera. As it has a regular USB connection I just assumed it would work in linux. Thou shalt not assume! should be written all over my forehead. This little camera was tricksy – even though it used USB it did not have support in linux. It didn’t bother me too much since I at the time used windows on my laptop and could use that to fetch my pictures. Oh and by the way. The camera is not great. Its focus is as broken as it can be often putting the focus on the background, making the foreground blurry. This happens regardless of the focus settings you use and as it turns out Pentax has agreed that this is a problem with this model.
Shortly after I bought the camera I received my employer/state sponsored “home PC” as it is called in Sweden. The deal is that the company buy you a computer which you then pay for on a monthly basis. The state then let you pay the computer before deducting tax making the computer much cheaper. My employer bought DELL machines featuring among other things a Soundblaster Live card. Almost all soundcards are supported by linux and especially soundblaster. I thought I was home safe this time.
The soundcard turned out not to work in linux as these soundblaster cards were a Dell only weirdity. Go figure. Normally I would have gone back with the card requiring a new, real, Soundblaster Live card. I couldn’t do this because formally my employer owns the computer. Do they care? No.
So at the moment I have a worthless soundcard (and an unused surround sound equipment), a digital camera from which I cannot fetch the pictures and a wireless adapter I cannot use with my laptop. I can’t help but feel stupid.
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