[Sussex] Argos Catalogue surprise

[Steven Dobson]

Colin

On Fri, 2006-11-10 at 14:32 +0000, Colin Pickard wrote:
> On 11/10/06, Nic James Ferrier <nferrier at tapsellferrier.co.uk> wrote:
> > If I were a printer supplier I'd be thinking twice about offering
> > linux support. The state of linux printing is still so appalling that
> > it must make you nervous about what support issues you're going to run
> > into.
> 
> Serious question - I wonder if Linux users do (or would) make up a
> measurable % of support costs for hardware suppliers?

A good question.

> I ask because Linux users IME tend to have well-defined routes for
> obtaining software support, and tend to use them first, only
> contacting a hardware manufacturer when a hardware problem is pretty
> much proven.

How much of that "a hardware problem is pretty much proven" is down to
the OS telling about what was going on?  At the BCF last Sunday I think
it was Nik that was talking to a punter about hard-disk problems.  With
Linux if there is a problem reading/writing to the disk you get an entry
in the logs - with Window's he said you don't.  At least the Linux logs
gives one a chance to do something about the problem *before* the disk
dies completely.

At the BCF I got hold of a 36-GByte SCSI disk for £10 - just right as a
system disk (i.e to hold the OS [/bin /etc/ /lib /usr /var] - too small
for /home).  So I thought I would try installing Ubuntu (edgy).

I had no problem doing the install - used it for a couple of days and
then tried upgrading to feisty.  Did the dist-upgrade from the command
line to check that all packages got upgraded - no errors reported.  But
after a reboot the xorg config didn't work anymore.

I looked in /var/log/Xorg.0.log and saw some errors to do with the wacom
tablet.  I don't have one so I removed the config for such
from /etc/X11/xorf.conf.

Rebooted - still no X or Gnome.

Looked again at the log file - still reported wacom problems?!?!?!?!?
So I looked at the date stamp of the log file - it was old.  Not from
the reboot.  So without any clue as to what the problem was and because
I didn't have my workstation to surf the Net I gave up on Ubuntu.

I burnt the new graphical netinstaller ISO for Debian (sid).  This
worked just fine and I got my graphical desktop back.  But I found out
during the install that Ctrl-Alt-F2 did not get me a command line prompt
like the old (non-graphical) Debian installer.  Neither did Ctrl-Alt-F3
get me the live log of the install.

While this is all well and good when things work, what do I do if things
don't?  Where do you look for errors?  What worries me most is that I
think the distros are becoming more like Windows in their attempt to be
more user friendly - some magic that does goes away and does it's think
while you sit their and pray.

Steve
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