NDISWRAPPER on the livecd

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

LOL I wonder how it is lazy to not drill holes in your roof in order to route cables to all of the rooms in your house when paying for such services can cost quite a bit and take some time, or just take some time if you buy the cabling yourself and try to set it up yourself and lets hope you don't screw it up which would then take even more time. When you could just by a wireless router and in some cases an amplifier for the signal and get a few wireless nics and solve the problem without paying some guy to drill holes in your home or risk screwing it up yourself.
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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."

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

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

/me falls over laughing really really hard.
I wonder how much that would actually even end up costing were you to even attempt it. You would have had to have built the house with this sort of networking setup in mind so as to avoid the hassle of trying to do it after the fact. Personally I will probably have to have a boat load of things custom made when I finally do end up being in a position to purchase my own home I already could use a totally custom computer stand for this box and some non retarded bookshelves, [I'm really tired of trying to pull my left arm out of the socket just to reach a book, it really ought to come down to me.] not to mention a custom kitchen, [again I'm tired of having to take my arm out of the socket to get at things.] I think anyone reading this gets the idea that all of this will cost me quite a bit and being able to not have to spend extra on a specially designed cabling setup just to be able to get the occassional operating system installed would be appreciated.

That is all anyone is saying here why ask people to break thier back to get something as minor [relatively speaking] as getting Gentoo or any other comparable system installed on a box when one can at least in some cases load the drivers for various nics into the Linux Kernel and continue as normal without having to leave something else without connectivity for the duration of the initial setup process which really only ends up creating more work for the end user than there should have to be given the size of ndiswrapper itself as far as space on the hard medium is concerned.

I think its really sad that Gentoo's users should have to result to building customized livecd's just to get something like this.
_________________
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."

opopanax · Apprentice Joined: 30 Aug 2004 Posts: 244

I'd much rather have open drivers available, yah. I'm not saying it wouldn't be convenient to have ndiswrapper on the livecd, it would. It just doesn't belong there. If you can point out any other software on the gentoo livecd that only works with proprietary middleware, then by all means, I'll shut my yap. However, I am a purist, except when I choose not to be--but I want it to be my choice. One of the reasons I like ubuntu, gentoo, and all the other free distros--They don't make me break the law by installing stuff that could theoretically get me into trouble, like libdvdcss in the US. I still install it, but I make the conscious choice, just like I make the conscious choice to use proprietary nVidia drivers. But I have the choice. I fire up mepis, and ndiswrapper "just works." However, there is no EULA for the driver that it magically installs and modprobes. For all I know, I could be violating copyright/patent infringement laws. Gentoo doesn't put you in that situation. If you want it, get it yourself, and be aware of the consequences.

ndiswrapper doesn't belong on the LiveCD.

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

How does ndiswrapper break any law when the person using it would more likely than not have legally purchased the hardware and therefore have good reason to use the drivers for said hardware? Having Ndiswrapper on the installation media wouldn't even require you to install anything at all; it does not require the manufacturers of the installation media to actually put the drivers for hardware supported by ndiswrapper on the installation medium those must be supplied by the end user directly.
_________________
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

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

Well said he just doesn't understand that there is no need whatsoever for the manufacturer to include the drivers they would only need to include the ndiswrapper module and the loading utility. Now that I think about it the whole issue over the hardware drivers being included by Mepis is most likely moot since typically those drivers are freely downloadable on the hardware manufacturers website. alsoit would again require that you actually have the hardware before the drivers are of any use unless of course you wanted to reverse engineer the drivers; which of course is still a non issue since the drivers could easily be obtained directly from the manufacturer without them ever even asking you to confirm that you even posses the hardware at all.
_________________
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."

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

opopanax · Apprentice Joined: 30 Aug 2004 Posts: 244

Oh? I thought you had to download it. haha! still doesn't mean I'm wrong. :-)

Just my opinion.

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

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

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

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

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

codergeek42 · Posted: Tue Mar 14, 2006 5:47 am Post subject:

HydroSan · Posted: Tue Mar 14, 2006 6:00 am Post subject:

Wow. What an arrogant and callous response from a developer of Gentoo! "You're a careless fool and nobody cares about you." Thanks! I'm glad to know that the developers of this distribution don't give a flying fuck about its own users! It could be as easy as adding one line and compiling the module in. It takes next to no time to put on the CD. Just list it as "unsupported." But stating "WE DON'T CARE ABOUT YOU" is quite possibly the worst response I've ever heard. Hell, it reeks of Debian. And why do you think I left Debian? Because they told me they didn't "give a shit" about my plights.
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Shadow Skill · Veteran Joined: 04 Dec 2004 Posts: 1023

Without Ndiswrapper and its module loading utilities one would have to use the files that are actually on the installation media thereby increasing the amount of time it would actually take for one to actually have an appropriately functioning system. I have even run into situations where the files on the install medium are bad in someway which basically means I am totally fucked without a network install unless I feel like redownloading the install medium isos. It happened to me with my freebsd install but I was able to continue the install and skip a ridiculously long upgrade process by performing an ftp install. Waiting until one is able to boot the box outside of the chroot and then set the nic up and then run through the upgrade to the initial system is just one extra step that does not need to exist for any real reason. Also keep in mind that some of us don't download the new live cd for each new profile and instead use older live cd's since it is a simple process to pull the up to date stage directly from the internet along with things like the Kernel sources. It is also more than possible that one may even need a specific version of a given package to be ready before you get out of the chroot in order for you to be able to do anything on your system. [I've had problems with my desktop Keyboard with older versions of the kernel on other distro's and have never been able to install Freebsd on my current desktop because of bugs in the driver for my onboard nic.]
_________________
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

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

Sly do you happen to know if the newer install media has sata drive support or where I can find out such information the laptop I am about to jump on is going to have a sata hard drive in it, It would really suck to get ready to put Gentoo on it [should I decide not to give freebsd a chance on that hardware] and find that it cannot properly read the sata drive to even begin the installation.
_________________
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."

brainiac_ghost · n00b Joined: 19 Sep 2004 Posts: 40

@shadowskill: the new livecd's have SATA support

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

amne · Posted: Tue Mar 14, 2006 10:30 am Post subject:

This has gone beyond ridiculous. So here - for the very last time:

It's only the LiveCD, which you only need to use for installing Gentoo, which takes a few hours.
For those few hours, you won't be able to use ndiswrapper, but wired ethernet.
If you don't want to use wired ethernet, do a networkless install.
If you don't want to do that either, get some live cd that has ndiswrapper on it, it's not like you're forced to use Gentoo's live CD. What is wrong with using another tool if it fits the purpose? Apart from having nothing to complain about here any more of course.
If you don't want to use another live CD either - and please call me arrogant for that if you have to - appearently no one cares enough about you to add this feature to the live CD because there are plenty of alternatives.