I discovered a great blog post some time ago, and typed up a reply but it’s been sat in my drafts for too long. It’s the new year so I figured now is as good a time as any to publish it.
The post details how Michael had some “fun” with the Viglen MPC, a small low-power PC. I tried to leave a comment, but his wordpress blog wouldn’t let me, so I’m pasting it here instead.
Hi Michael. I was the one who filed that bug and the workaround about the IDE driver being missing from the kernel on the Viglen MPC-L, so I feel your pain at the install 
However I think your rant at Linux is slightly misplaced. Linux has better hardware support out of the box than any other operating system. Indeed looking around my desk I can see numerous devices that ‘Just Work’ on my Linux based desktops, laptops and servers but on Windows require hunting down bloated drivers & “helpers” and numerous reboots.
Yes, it failed for you on this occasion and the way to get it working isn’t pretty, straightforward or logical to a non-techy or new user. That bug is not specifically Linux’s fault. I believe it was a mistake on the part of the Ubuntu packagers, who disabled the compilation of that module when they shouldn’t have. Clearly a bug which should have been picked up earlier – during testing. Although mitigating that the Viglen (and all other AMD Geode-based ION devices) aren’t exactly commonplace amongst Ubuntu users I’d guess, although thanks to the podcast there’s a lot more of them in the hands of Ubuntu users than there used to be
That the bug exists is frustrating, but it highlights something interesting.The fact that very early on during the install on the Viglen I was able to have network connectivity up, copy the driver file off of another machine over the LAN and load it into the running kernel, then continue the installer onto the disk speaks volumes in my book. Yes, it’s an ugly hack, yes it very unfriendly for new users. But it’s been possible to do these hacky things on Linux for years. Some of these ‘workarounds’ are flat out impossible to do on other platforms. I love hearing about the wild hacky ways people get Linux onto machines. It’s a testament to how flexible Linux is as a platform.
By way of comparison, on my Toshiba (big brand, very common) laptop, trying to install Windows XP fails because it is missing the driver for the disk, so you can’t install XP Pro off a stock XP SP2/3 CD. Vista is missing it too! The laptop doesn’t even have a floppy drive so the old “Press F6 to load a driver” at boot trick is no good either. Windows 7 doesn’t even have the driver built in! At least now the Windows 7 installer supports adding a driver on a USB stick, which is a great step forward. Shame that innovation came more than 2 years after I bought the laptop.
I think it’s a myth that Linux distros don’t have decent hardware support, and one that needs squashing. As for the user friendlyness, we’re working on that!
All the best, and keep listening to the show 
4 Comments
Hi Alan,
thanks for the reply. Funnily enough when I was having fun and games with the Viglen I came across your site and contemplated contacting you for assistance but with the IT motto of RTFM I did the bloke thing and eventually figured it out.
Now I know I did have a rant about Linux’s usability, my reasoning was quite simple… As someone who used to routinely mess around with Linux back in the days of RedHat 5.2 (!) and was then used to compiling driver support, kernels etc., I had expected that the user experience would have significantly advanced from those early days. Now with the “right” hardware installing Linux can be a breeze, but on the Viglen it’s all no pain no gain as the happless user wades through enless forums, faq’s and How-To’s in search of the holy grail.
Hopefully my exploits will help those in getting this quite neat solution up and running with slightly less pain then I went through. My next challenge is to build in nzb support through installing SABnzbd onto the same box.
Anyway just to clear up any misconceptions that I’m am pro Microsoft and that they can do no wrong I digress… File sharing in Windows is complete pants since they changed the way Windows Vista handles Administrative shares. I pity any Admin that has to work in a Vista environment and needs access to the administrative shares… welcome to a world of hurt! Lol!
Also you are right about the floppy requirements for driver support during Windows installations, it’s crazy in this modern USB world that we have to still rely on a floppy disc (which is why I always keep one handy just in case).
By the way I think I’ve fixed the comments issue on WordPress so hopefully it should work fine now.
Regards,
Michael Wlach
I always stop reading as soon as someone puts in the word “bloated” where it does not add anything, afraid that the point couldn’t be made without an insult. But I thought I’d let you know. The sentence was much better without it, clearer and just as valid. Doesn’t matter if it’s true, it just sounds childish and sounds like that’s the real problem, when it isn’t. Bloated is at the bottom of the problem with windows drivers.
Oh get over yourself.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/bloated
“bloat·ed adj.
1. Much bigger than desired: a bloated bureaucracy; a bloated budget.
…”
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareList?os=228&lc=en&dlc=en&cc=uk&lang=en&product=1119598
Basic driver: 70MB
Full feature driver: 507MB
That’s bloated.
Hi Popey,
Good point, well made. I couldn’t agree more.
I have the following devices dotted around the house, all run a flavour of Linux: NSLU2, Dell T7400, Dell Inspiron 1545, Homebrew HTPC, iPAQ 3970, Dell Mini 9, Dell Latitude D400, Compaq Deskpro, PlayStation 3 and a Toshiba Libretto.
That little lot covers: ARM to Pentium MMX through to dual quad core Xeon CPUs. 32mb of RAM to 32GB of RAM. IDE, SATA, USB storage, SSD and RAID. Not forgetting the numerous wired and wireless NIC’s, the video cards, the audio cards, the video capture/turner cards and so on. In all, some 14 years of computing evolution.
Now the installation of Linux on to some of those devices is painful. The PS3, Toshiba Libratto and iPAQ for example. Yet, it is possible to run Linux on them all the same. The fact I can still get use from my Toshiba Libretto, 13 years after I bought, is pretty amazing. More so when you consider the only supported operating system for that device, Windows 95, has its support dropped by Microsoft 8 years ago.
Linux, supports all those platforms. Yes, you might have to hack things here and there but Windows (any version) can’t run on all those devices. I agree that Windows (some versions) can run on the more main stream laptops and desktops above, but you’ll have to download your own body weight in drivers first. Yet with Ubuntu a single CD (CD people, not DVD) is all I need to get running with a complete desktop OS, including office suite, and all the drivers I can eat.
Linux is user friendly. It’s just a matter of how friendly and with which friends
Regards, Martin.