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Grex > Agora56 > #63: the near future of networked homes? | |
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| Author |
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| 25 new of 290 responses total. |
ball
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response 222 of 290:
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Mar 9 17:03 UTC 2006 |
I have to buy a couple of wireless ethernet adaptors. One
will be USB since my iBook doesn't have PC-Card or Cardbus
slots. I could conceivably add an internal Airport card, but
a USB adaptor is more portable between machines. It will
almost certainly be a Linksys WUSB11, since that's one that
NetBSD supports. The other could be PCI, but I don't know
yet which to buy.
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keesan
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response 223 of 290:
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Mar 9 20:06 UTC 2006 |
I may have the same Linksys card. Maybe those of you more knowledgeable can
compile that rtl8180.o module for your own systems, if not mine. I just tried
to recompile a 2.4.31 kernel and it no longer recognizes memory cards so I
added back a few things I had taken out (having to do with USB storage) and
recompiled it and now the modules again. If this works I will make one try
at the module but I compiled a kernel without Wireless LAN support to make
it smaller and would have to recompile it one more time. I had no idea which
device we have in their list so I said N instead of Y or M.
We do have a Win98 laptop computer from the neighbor and will try the card
in there at the library, for educational purposes (and we can download linux
kernel source code with it there via 98SE).
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marcvh
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response 224 of 290:
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Mar 9 20:14 UTC 2006 |
Oh, back on the issue of a la carte cable channels, recent news reports
have confirmed what I've always suspect but hadn't seen in print -- the
biggest single reason why basic cable costs so much is ESPN. It's the
most expensive channel in the typical basic lineup, $2-3 per month
even though only something like 30% of the households paying for it
actually watch it, and the cost gets even worse when you bundle in the
other critical add-ons like ESPN2 and The Golf Channel (myself I'd
rather watch The Flannel Channel.)
Apparently the FCC has started to warm up to the idea of a la carte, but
I still suspect it will get derailed somehow. Disney will lose billions
in market cap if they can't continue making money from people who don't
watch. But I'll just put those extra costs on my mental list along with
the taxes I'm paying to make payments on the Kingdome and such.
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twenex
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response 225 of 290:
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Mar 9 23:38 UTC 2006 |
Re: #222. That depends on what drivers you want to use. If you want to use
the madwife (aka madwifi) drivers (or their NetBSD equivalent, whatever that
may be), then I suggest looking VERY HARD at compatbility and getting, if at
all possible, a guarantee from the vendor that if the card does not work *on
NetBSD* then you may return it. Given that I believe the problem with my
broadcom internal wireless card was the on-off switch built in to th laptop;
that an external card of any sort shouldn't have one; and that i downloaded
broadcom chipset drivers from linksys which appeared to interface well with
the card, i should say that linksys drivers with an external wifi card and
ndiswrapper should work a charm. (ndiswrapper is a wrapper for proprietary
windows network drivers which, by emulating the Windows Network Device
Interface System, trick the drivers into thinking they are running on Windows
instead of Linux or the BSDs.)
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keesan
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response 226 of 290:
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Mar 10 00:50 UTC 2006 |
How much memory does ndiswrapper take up? Our best laptop has 32MB.
Someone at my linux list will give another try at rtl8180 driver. My 2.4.31
kernel works with glibc but not libc5 linux, don't know why, and finds the
USB memory stick, but I have no idea how to compile for PCMCIA so can't use
the wireless card with it if I compile it for 2.4.31 (which INSTALL says
requires hacking, 2.6 does not).
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ball
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response 227 of 290:
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Mar 10 06:47 UTC 2006 |
ndiswrapper sounds hideous. The vast majority of vendors,
when asked about NetBSD, Linux or whatever will simply say
"we only support MS Windows". My understanding is that the
WUSB11 is supported by NetBSD's native atu(4) driver, but
there is always the risk that a vendor will switch chipsets
without changing a product's model number or packaging.
Gits.
I faced a similar risk with a recent webcam purchase.
Happily the NetBSD people were kind enough to bring the
spcaview in pkgsrc up to the latest version, which included
support for my camera.
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mcnally
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response 228 of 290:
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Mar 10 07:04 UTC 2006 |
re #227: there's nothing particularly awful about ndiswrapper
and it's very, very useful in cases where the manufacturer (I'm
looking at *YOU*, Broadcom..) won't release details necessary
to implement a native driver.
The Dell laptop I use for work has a built-in broadcom wireless
chip that isn't supported by Linux except through ndiswrapper.
However with the hardware emulation mode that ndiswrapper provides
it works very well (better, seemingly, than it does in Windows,
as odd as that may be..)
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twenex
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response 229 of 290:
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Mar 10 15:35 UTC 2006 |
Re: #226. Sorry, I've no idea how much memory ndiswrapper takes up, as I'm
not using it at the moment. But my comments on the subject were addressed to
ball.
Re: #227. More hideous than running UN*X under VMware? More hideous than
having no net access or not running UN*X at all?
Re: 228, Broadcom: Let's look together.
re: 228, ndiswrapper: Hah. Hahah. Hahahah. Oh, I larfed.
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keesan
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response 230 of 290:
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Mar 10 16:02 UTC 2006 |
Somebody with ndiswrapper please let us know its memory usage before I bother
with it. DSL (50MB of Debian on live CD) may support it if you download an
extra package of applications. Ubuntu Live might support it too, but we don't
have 128MB of RAM on our laptops to run that huge GUI in (it won't run at all
with less, not sure if DSL will accept 32MB). I will try the card once in
Win98 at the public library.
My 2.4.31 kernel won't work at all with USB - crashes with uhci. I modelled
it on something that works and just added usb-uhci (as module) and removed
a bunch of things that did not look essential (various USB scanners, cameras,
serial adaptors, ISDN modems). My kernel config is at
http://keesan.freeshell.org/bl/2.4.31/configsy.431 - all help appreciated.
And when I tried using this setup to compile rtl8180 it would not compile
anyway and INSTALL says I need to hack Makefile for 2.4, and 2.6 is easier.
2.6 takes too much RAM and is ridiculous for a 100MHz laptop computer.
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ball
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response 231 of 290:
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Mar 10 17:57 UTC 2006 |
Re #229: More hideous than finding natively supported hard-
ware, although in some cases (such as hardware built into
laptops) I can see that's not always practical.
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cross
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response 232 of 290:
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Mar 10 21:29 UTC 2006 |
This response has been erased.
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nharmon
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response 233 of 290:
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Mar 10 22:21 UTC 2006 |
> And Running Unix sucks.
As opposed to what? Windows?
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cross
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response 234 of 290:
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Mar 10 22:35 UTC 2006 |
This response has been erased.
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ball
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response 235 of 290:
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Mar 11 05:10 UTC 2006 |
I suspect Plan 9 has more scant hardware support even than
NetBSD ;-)
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cross
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response 236 of 290:
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Mar 11 14:39 UTC 2006 |
This response has been erased.
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ball
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response 237 of 290:
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Mar 11 16:44 UTC 2006 |
Out of interest though, what makes Plan 9 good?
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twenex
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response 238 of 290:
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Mar 11 22:04 UTC 2006 |
Having more than one machine spare!
And sorry, but they got the Plan 9 windowing system VERY wrong, unless they
now believe in dictating policy as well as implementation. In which case, both
the windowing system and they are wrong.
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ball
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response 239 of 290:
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Mar 11 23:27 UTC 2006 |
Re #238: ?
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naftee
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response 240 of 290:
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Mar 12 03:00 UTC 2006 |
?[3~[3~
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cross
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response 241 of 290:
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Mar 12 14:32 UTC 2006 |
This response has been erased.
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nharmon
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response 242 of 290:
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Mar 12 15:41 UTC 2006 |
> they get it in their heads that the way Linus et al do it is the One
> True Way
This is probably because Linux is the first unix-like operating system
these people have ever used. It was pretty much that way with me.
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remmers
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response 243 of 290:
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Mar 12 17:58 UTC 2006 |
Hey, at least Linux and X11 are actually used by lots of real people to
get useful stuff done. Plan 9 seems to be mainly a platform for
generating superior attitudes and academic papers on operating system
design.
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ball
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response 244 of 290:
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Mar 12 18:34 UTC 2006 |
Re #241: I'm not so sure about Linux, but I like X. I like
the ability to run a client program on whatever machine
happens to be most appropriate and have its output display
to (and keyboard/pointing device input from) whatever
machine happens to be in front of me. I also like the fact
X makes no attempt to dictate my choice of window manager.
I imagine X predates Linux and it's developed by different
people.
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cross
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response 245 of 290:
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Mar 12 19:37 UTC 2006 |
This response has been erased.
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ball
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response 246 of 290:
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Mar 12 23:16 UTC 2006 |
X works for me. It's nice that it's cross-platform too. Is
Plan 9's windowing system confined just to Plan 9?
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