NDISWRAPPER on the livecd

klieber · Posted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 12:25 am Post subject:

Wow -- nice flamefest. Did anyone bring marshmallows?

Having been part of this project for a number of years now, it always amazes me how often things denegrate into a "users" vs. "developers" flame war. Guess what? We're all part of the same group. Some of us have found a particular itch that needed scratching and ended up volunteering time to make Gentoo better. Others haven't.

Read the original bug -- Chris is saying he doesn't want to spend his time supporting ndiswrapper. That's his right -- he volunteers for Gentoo and should be able to spend his time towards something he finds useful and enjoyable. That also means that, if someone is willing to take their time to create and support an official or unofficial modification to the current LiveCD, they will have found (and scratched) another itch that seems to plague a number of users on this thread.

This is about the time where folks say, "but I don't have the time to do that". Sorry guys -- you pay a price for using Free software and that is that people have to pony up their time and effort to help make it better. You are absolutely allowed and encouraged to request features from the folks who do volunteer their time, but don't be surprised when the response is "no" or "not right now". Each person is entitled to work on what they want to and you have no right to expect or demand otherwise. You do have the right to take the source, which is open to you, modify it to suit your needs and then donate your efforts back to the community. That is what got Gentoo to where it is today.

--kurt
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aidanjt · Posted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 1:01 am Post subject:

Nicely put kurt.

This thread has been flamebait from the beginning. Users, Moderators, and Developers alike have made perfectly logical and valid arguments as to why ndiswrapper shouldn't be on the LiveCD, unfortunatly there are a few who demand things and wont stop until they get what they want without effort (other than fanning flames) from themselves.

Bad Penguin · Guru Joined: 18 Aug 2004 Posts: 507

Bad Penguin · Guru Joined: 18 Aug 2004 Posts: 507

Shadow Skill · Veteran Joined: 04 Dec 2004 Posts: 1023

Here's the thing some people decided to blame users for not having "supported" hardware the problem with this is very simple in the same breath those blaiming the user for not having supported hardware and buying from manufacturers who allegedly do not care about Linux. Why the hell should any business or individual care about Linux when the vendors go out of thier way to not care about the needs of the userbase? There IS at the very least a partial solution with respect to the actual support of the hardware by the operating system yet there is unnessecary resistance from the release engineering team personally I would be willing to test a livecd that had the ndiswrapper module available to it as soon as I am able to get my relacement laptop [the one on my IBM is completely shot.

] I think the same is true for many of the people who have voted for this in the poll and probably by more indivduals who merely decided to observe this thread or the bug reports.

If anyone was flaming anyone it was the people accusing others of being lazy or shouting that no one cares about them. Accusing people of flaming others in a rather lame attempt to gain some sort of high ground while going on about some story about how the user should give something back [does testing this thing count?] is just sad. Someone always tells this story about contribution as if they know what the other person behind the keyboard is doing. It just ends up being a case of you NEVER contribute enough in someone's eyes so they are never valid. The fact that some staff feels the need to come in and defend behavior that cannot really BE defended in good concience really gives the impression that in order to become a staff member one must make oneself suffer from some degree of groupthink. Sure you can be of the opinion that it does not belong on the livecd but why are you not calling out rude behavior on the part of the staff but users get anned for "personal attacks" while the site admin is condescending to another person on the board and is basically being belligerent.

There was another poster to this thread who at first thought that putting the module on the cd was not a good idea but I do not remember one instance of him being totally condescending where it was not warranted to anyone. He didn't accuse them of being careless or stupid for buying a given piece of hardware he was actually civil. I would hope the staff would be able to do the same and that they wouldn't indirectly attempt to defend or gloss over that sort of behavior from the staff.
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Ware wa mutekinari.
Wa ga kage waza ni kanau mono nashi.
Wa ga ichigeki wa mutekinari.

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pilla · Posted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 1:53 am Post subject:

slycordinator · Advocate Joined: 31 Jan 2004 Posts: 3065 Location: Korea

I don't understand the "logic" behind "Gentoo livecd shouldn't support it because other livecds already support it."

Should we scrap portage because debian has apt?

Though not being able to currently test it, is a good reason (though only presently).

pilla · Posted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 2:01 am Post subject:

Yes, Shadow Skill, you're completely right. We are just a bunch of idiots that were chosen because of not being able to think by themselves. Why do you waste your time with a distribution that only employ morons as developers and staff?
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Bad Penguin · Guru Joined: 18 Aug 2004 Posts: 507

slycordinator · Advocate Joined: 31 Jan 2004 Posts: 3065 Location: Korea

gentoo includes stuff they don't officially support all the time.

For instance, I had seen that lilo was recently made stable on amd64 and an amd64 user was confused that there were no examples on how to use it in the guide (I had to point him to the x86 install guide for lilo usage example).

So I put a bug up that lilo was fully stable and that it would be a good idea to include the usage in the install guide. Closed as either by design or won't fix; they said that they only support grub despite lilo being stable.

I said "You could put examples and have the entire section marked unsupported" and they said no.

Shadow Skill · Veteran Joined: 04 Dec 2004 Posts: 1023

So exactly why can't a link be made to the x86 section of the guide its probably not going to be different from the x86 methods save maybe some minor path changes? I guess I have to make it a point to learn catalyst now since I do kind of want to do a wireless install on the model I want to get since this thread made me really think about such things that I had not thought about in a very long time since I have been able to jack my extra long cable for installs and such.
_________________
Ware wa mutekinari.
Wa ga kage waza ni kanau mono nashi.
Wa ga ichigeki wa mutekinari.

"First there was nothing, so the lord gave us light. There was still nothing, but at least you could see it."

slycordinator · Advocate Joined: 31 Jan 2004 Posts: 3065 Location: Korea

mkzelda · n00b Joined: 22 Aug 2004 Posts: 32

slycordinator · Advocate Joined: 31 Jan 2004 Posts: 3065 Location: Korea

I think you guys are hounding him on that statement.

I do think he meant us to take it as saying that no one cares.

He was saying "You use a non-standard piece of equipment, then get gentoo's live cd and see it doesn't work. Then you feel like no one cares."

Now, it would be one thing for the devs to say "I know it feels like no one cares; we just can't support it yet." But instead the devs have said "We don't want to support it or even include it unsupported."

Shadow Skill · Veteran Joined: 04 Dec 2004 Posts: 1023

slycordinator · Advocate Joined: 31 Jan 2004 Posts: 3065 Location: Korea

klieber · Posted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 4:51 am Post subject:

klieber · Posted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 5:00 am Post subject:

slycordinator · Advocate Joined: 31 Jan 2004 Posts: 3065 Location: Korea

96140 · Retired Dev Joined: 23 Jan 2005 Posts: 1324

codergeek42 · Posted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 6:27 am Post subject:

Excellently said, Kurt!

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slycordinator · Advocate Joined: 31 Jan 2004 Posts: 3065 Location: Korea

Here's my idea:

Make an experimental livecd that's identical to the official one only it has ndiswrapper. Put it up in the mirrors (or a particular one, doesn't matter). Then ask for people to download it and give back word on how it goes.

That way, if enough people come back saying it works maybe it'll be able to be put in the official medium at a later date.

And this avoids the devs who don't have the hardware needing to test it. And it avoids people assuming that it'll work out of the box (since the devs are worried that users expect official stuff to work right).