Moving on from the Fedora Fixation

I was so fed up with trying to find all libraries in Fedora Core 4 and trying to replace defective LFY CDs, that I replaced it with OpenSuse 10. This was last night. Before that, I banged my head against yum and yumex (no links) for updates and installs. Why does system-config-packages have to suck so much that you require third party applications to know what exactly runs on your system?

The banes of my FOSS foray, i.e. driver for my winmodem and a working, updated instance of VLC have led me far and wide in search of a solution. It seems that the right decision lies in cutting the gordian knot.

First, you don't have internet connectivity with Linux as the OS. Then the update CDs that you get with LFY are defective, both in August and November 2005. Videolan.org has not released binaries for FC4, not even for v 0.8.2 on FC3, so you go and try somebody else's (livna.org and freshrpms.net) builds. They don't compile/install, as some libraries are missing (they are not present even on the FC4 DVD). You find out how to use yum, build local repositories, and then learn you still don't have them. Many of the rpms won't install either, because of bad media. Why do I have to be trapped in this cycle? When will I finally get my broadband connection? When I go to a different provider? What about my phone no. then?

So I finally gave OpenSuse 10 a shot. The installer GUI has a fresh look and everything went fine for the first five minutes, but when it came to choosing an install type and partitioning, I was too scared to decide whether to try to update FC4 with Suse or go for a fresh install. I first chose update as the safe option, but ended up with a bundle of unresolvable dependencies. So I decided to install anew. I wanted to format my partitions with reiserfs, so I tried deleting existing Linux partitions. More confusion and aborts. I didn't know how to set the /boot, swap and / partitions within and without logical volumes. I finally wrote down my existing configuration, and replicated it with different format and size options.

After that, it was very smooth, and package selection became easier. It is categorized a bit differently than in case of Fedora/RH, but you get a split-pane view of what is included in each category, and what you want to do with each package: install, upgrade, delete, never install, update if new, etc. All this, I think, is thanks to YaST.

[Good suggestion, Mr. Andrew Davis. It seems to be easier and better integrated. ]

OpenSuse also DETECTED MY WINMODEM!! Although it still doesn't work (who will get the credit for writing a driver for PCTel 688T?), it's still a big step. In Fedora, I had to check through lspci if any device was detected at all, not to speak of identification.

I still don't know how to determine which port it has been mounted on, so I have to rely on windows' reporting minus one. COM3 = /dev/ttyS2? I had almost hoped that the modem would work on Suse. I should have known better. Yet, I can't still figure out why somebody cannot write a fit-all driver after all these years. Michael Xhaard [xhaard.free.fr] has done it for the Sunplus camera chips, so why can't you?

By the way, I will definitely try his drivers tonight. And I have downloaded (most of) the VLC - and 3rd party library - source code, so it's going to be a lot of compiles tonight. Wish me luck.