Nobody Knows The Trouble I’ve Seen

[ Thanks to Randall
Cooper for this article. ]

I’ll try to make a long story short. I’m a Linux user and have
been for many years. My current distro is Kubuntu 7.04, which is
installed on my Asus F3J series laptop, with its ATI Radeon X2300
monitor and its Intel 82801G sound card. Everything works, though
getting the ATI monitor to work wasn’t a simple process. But that’s
not the story I want to tell.

I’m leaving on an extended trip and decided that I wanted to
leave my computer behind and bring only my USB drive and a LiveCD
distro. I defined my requirements for a functioning system: email
(including the ability to import my email/contacts/calendar from
Kontact if I couldn’t use that suite), wireless net access,
reliable audio/video, and Skype. Knowing that my laptop is a tough
machine to configure, I determined that if I could succeed with it,
I’d likely be able to succeed with any machine I might
encounter.

I started with Puppy Linux 2.16 NOP. And this particular version
of Puppy is great: OpenOffice, Opera, booted right in to the ATI
with 1280×800 screen, etc. etc. Except that Puppy can’t run Skype.
Because Puppy can’t recognize the microphone on my system. As far
as I know, there’s nothing especially odd about the built in
microphone on the Asus laptop. But Puppy doesn’t see it. And
considerable searching of the forums and wikis doesn’t produce a
fix.

So I move on to Fedora 7 (just out). But I don’t get very far,
because Fedora can’t boot the graphical interface. It freezes in a
command line level. The ATI card is too much for it. And
considerable searching of the forums and knowledge bases doesn’t
produce a fix.

At this point, I’ll remind the reader that I’m working with
LiveCD’s. So making changes to the system is difficult or
impossible in most cases.

So I move on to Berry, which is based on Fedora 6. This one
boots the ATI graphics, but can’t recognize the 3945 wireless card.
So it’s a no go.

So I move on to Kubuntu (the system that works on the laptop
right now). But, remember that I said it took some doing. And the
problem is that I can’t get the LiveCD to get past the ATI graphic
problem (Kubuntu can’t be installed on the ATI as a LiveCD; you
have to use a text based installer).

So I move on to Mepis. But Mepis 6.5.02 can’t deal with the
sound card (a known problem, as it turns out, but one not reparable
on the LiveCD).

I’m a Linux user for many years and have no intention of
changing. But I confess to disappointment. The fact is, there
should be a distro that can handle the sound card, wireless card,
and graphics card of a laptop. And in particular, it should be able
to do so when those devices are so common. The fact is, I am able
to find distros that handle one or two of those three, just none
that can handle all three.

That means that if somehow they could join forces, they could
have it all. We could have it all.

I’ll get by, probably by using more than one LiveCD during my
trip. But I wish that weren’t necessary. And I don’t think it
should be.