On Sunday 20 January 2002 21:49, David A. Bandel wrote: | Before Windoze 98 hit the streets, I had a laptop running Linux. I | remember folks eyes popping wide open when I'd reach over and pop | out the PCMCIA card while the system was running. Then a minute | later, pop it back in and it just worked. The only think I had to | do was configure a few values in the /etc/pcmcia/network.opts file. | My wireless card (Orinoco) works the same, but I also have a | wireless.opts file I had to edit.
it's actually even easier now, at least in some distributions. in suse, for instance, i've inserted the intel pro-100, the xircom combination etherlink-modem card, and -- this one surprised me -- even the little 40-meg pcmcia iomega clik drive, and had them all immediately recognized. (still having a little trouble with the panasonix 783a pcmcia cd reader, which requires three drivers to be loaded -- scsi, scsi-cd, and the pcmcia scsi driver for this particular card -- all in the right order; in fairness, i've devoted little time to trying to set it up. | I was told (don't know first-hand) that Windoze didn't (does it | now?) allow you to just pop stuff in and out at leisure. Had to | stop it by hand first, then it would tell you that you could safely | eject it. And folks whine about having to mount and unmount a | floppy in Linux. Geesh. no longer the case; in fact, hasn't been the case for a long time. initial installation is different, in that you can be prompted for a driver if the card hasn't been used before. (in linux, practically everything is a kernel module, so it's already installed.) but it hot plugs nicely now and has for awhile. (the little pcmcia floppy in my little libretto is supported in windows and not supported in linux in any meaningful way -- it can be made to work under a limited set of circumstances, but it does not offer hot plugging on demand.) | Now, someone, somewhere may have a GUI way to edit those | /etc/pcmcia/*.opt files. I don't, it would just slow me down. And | the edit is a one-time thing. Done once, forgotten forever. but not exactly intuitive. | So please don't tell me Windoze is easier, because it just ain't | true. My prime example is the registry -- now there's a nightmare. i'd offer a different example. the libretto arrived here with w2k on it. i plugged the pcmcia nic into it and whammo, i was online. it asked me for nothing. which was pretty cool -- until less than a week later, when it became known that the plug-n-play network stuff in windows is so shot full of security holes that the fbi actually took the extraordinary step of issuing a release saying that it should be turned off. this was just the latest and one of the worst examples of windows offering putative ease of use at the cost of security. whether such a tradeoff is necessary -- can ease of use be achieved without compromising security? -- i do not know, and neither does microsoft, because it's never been a concern of theirs. nor do they intend for it to be, because their idea is to own your computer, its connections, and its contents. -- dep There is sobbing of the strong, And a pall upon the land; But the People in their weeping Bare the iron hand; Beware the People weeping When they bare the iron hand. _______________________________________________ Linux-users mailing list - http://linux.nf/mailman/listinfo/linux-users Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Archives,and Digests are located at the above URL.
