Question I cant ask on Xandros Forum !

[MikeOdy]

Hi All,
I admit I am a Linux newbie - have had Xandros 3.0 for just under a month.
Although I am very competent with XP nitty gritty, I have to admit to being rather disappointed with Xandros and Linux so far.
Installation as a dual boot with XP went with just a few problems that I fixed up, but I am still without sound [Creative Sound Blaster Live Value], and have no internet connection [Winmodem with Connexant chip]. I must have tried 50 times to fix up each - all with heaps of Forum support - but so far no luck
My initial printing problems were solved by replacing a Lexmark with a hpLaser Jet.
Now I am definately not about to give up - thats for certain, but I have to ask the question - do other distros present the same sort of problems for newbies ? Will one day soon there be a blinding flash of light and everything will work ? I need to know.
Maybe every 'expert' on every forum experienced what I am experiencing - or did they?
So guys, do I persist with Xandros or is there another distro that is just a little more 'user friendly' ?
Your comments [and encouragement] would be welcomed !
Thanks.
Mike

[onlinebacon]

I wouldn't worry, stuff doesn't always work but ya get to learn in the process, so, well, maybe if you try a different distribution ( you say you dual boot, so try something a little less windows, like debian, slackware or maybe Suse)

That's my 2 cents,

Good luck

onlinebacon

[Dolda2000]

Well, there are some things, such as those you describe, which are not likely to be fixed in a very long time, if ever.

The reason for this is that both Lexmark and Connexant (the actual companies, that is) refuse to publish the specifications for their hardware devices. As long as they refuse to do that, good drivers cannot be written for their devices (since without the specifications, noone knows how to write drivers).

The same thing most likely goes for that Sound Blaster Live of yours. Although Sound Blaster Lives are generally supported, there is a special version of the SB Live called emu10k1x (the ordinary model is called just emu10k1, without the X), which is primarily shipped with some Dell computers. I don't know if other computer manufacturers also use emu10k1x cards. Either way, the emu10k1x card is the same -- the manufacturer refuses to publish specifications for it. There is an early Linux driver for emu10k1x that has been reversed engineered, but it's still in the very early stages and doesn't work well at all at this time.

So the thing is, if you're using Linux, you have to be much more careful about which hardware you buy, to ensure that it's supported by Linux.

[ladymecha]

well if you want you can try Simplymepis or Ubantu, both are sorta like Xandros but I know that they are a bit better when it comes to hardware detection.

I know I use a Saitek controller and they really dont support any OS other then windows... but by chance my controller worked when it was not supposed to.

[jimbaloo]

I'm not sure how user-friendly Xandros is, but I can reccomend using Fedora Core as a learning distro. I had few problems with my installation with FC2.
Slackware is kinda fun but it requires a steeper learning curve than a lot of other distros.
As mentioned earlier, incompatible hardware remains incompatible until the manufacturer decides to cooperate with the linux community.

[geese]

I’m a newbie and i was quite impressed with SuSE, but you should check here for more info.

winmodems are a real pain, some work, most don’t. You are probably better off with an external serial modem.

[loft306]

on the modem issue i sugest an external serial modem ...that is if you have a serial port they can be had for $20

[genesus]

sound blaster's can be a ***** to get working, go to www.alsa-project.org and go through the matrix to figure out which driver you need, probably emu10k1 or emu10k2, then follow the instructions, its a piece of cake...sort of...

[AlexK]

Apparaently it is possible to get a connexant winmodem see the linmodems site working under linux, you will just need a bit of persistance. I also would recommend SuSE as another distro that you could try as it is very newbie friendly and seems to detect a lot of hardware out of the box.

[MikeOdy]

Thanks for responses everyone - I will of course hang in there.
Anyone have any thoughts about Red Hat - it certainly gets a lot of 'coverage' in Linux forums etc ?
Thanks again.
Mike.