[Sussex] Question re: my presentation

[Iain Stevenson]

Well certainly Yellowdog LInux didn't ship with diald - about the only 
software that did on demand dialling when I wanted it in 1999/2000 when I 
first got to grips with Linux.  Since I was using an old Mac (and am still 
using the same machine now) there were problems with using it and pppd on 
the PPC platform.  This was a bit bizarre since the guy that wrote pppd is 
a Mac Linux guru ;-)  If it hadn't been for a lot of help from one chap on 
the diald mailing list I would have thrown linux in the bin because I 
wanted diald.  The Yellowdog system did a good job of installing KDE and 
Gnome (runs appallingly on my Mac btw) but failed to do much with the less 
commonplace packages.

Eventually, we found that there was a problem in the pppd software.  I 
informed the said Mac guru and got the customary "sod off newbie, your 
brain is too small to understand the majesty of my efforts" response.  So I 
and a few others simply patched the code and I happily ran diald until I 
got broadband.

I guess this illustrates both the strength and weakness of the Linux "free" 
distribution model!

  Iain



--On Thursday, November 4, 2004 9:27 am +0000 Geoff Teale 
<gteale at cmedltd.com> wrote:

> Gavin,
>
> SuSE has done this as part of a standard install procedure for many
> years now.  Fedora / Red Hat and numerous "user friendly" distros have
> (including SuSE) PPP configuration through GUI apps available from their
> control panels or preferences menus.
>
> Really Debian, Gentoo, Arch, etc.. are not aimed at novice users and so
> they don't make this stuff blindingly obvious (or indeed install it if
> the user has no need for it).
>
> This differentiation of distributions approach is a great strength of
> Linux but also a frustration for people getting into Linux - if all the
> experienced people say Debian/Gentoo/Aunt Mable's Linux is the best how
> come it's so hard t figure out?
>
> On Wed, 2004-11-03 at 23:55 +0000, Gavin Stevens wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> As part of my planned presentation (hopefully at the Nov moot), I was
>> just wondering if anyone had any experience of installing a distribution
>> other than Debian & how easy was it to configure that distribution for
>> dial-up internet connection? Did it work pretty much straight out of the
>> box, or was there more to it?
>>
>> Any answers much appreciated.
>>
>> TIA
>>
>> Gavin.
>>
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> --
> Geoff Teale <gteale at cmedltd.com>
> Cmed Technology
>
>
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