Windows ME sucks!

The damn thing installed after an hour and now it refuses to recogonize my DVD/CD-ROM drive. So I'm back to installing XP Home.

For all practical purposes it turns my Rs 1 lakh laptop into a piece of junk.

Lord knows what I'll do if this doesnt' work...

FSF associate member!

Yay! I finally became a FSF Associate member. Member #1541. Forked $120 for it though, which means quite a significant sum in Indian Rupees. But WTF, I owe FSF the ca$h, much much more than that infact.

So I can get mail as: aaditya at member dot fsf dot org, which is awesome :-)

networking on the #$%^ing Dell laptop

I've been trying to get the Dell laptop to network under windows XP. So far it has proved to be a losing battle.

The version of XP I got is XP Home. Which does not support Windows domain controllers. Or more than 5 computers on the same network. And when I try to set up good ol' TCP/IP networking (an IP, subnet, Gateway address) it doesn't work. Arghhhhh...

Finally I'm trying to get Windows ME to install and perhaps network using that. All I need to get in is a measly 250 kB Broadcom driver for Linux kernel, which will allow me to network under Linux and hence get an upgraded version of Debian GNU/Linux. If it had been an open source driver, I might have typed the damn thing in by hand.

Windows ME installation underway...*Sigh*

new laptop!

Finally the long held dream of a notebook pc got fulfilled. And my dream was to say no to Microsoft EULA and to have only Free Software on this machine.

Which is a shattered dream...

I got this Dell Inspiron 8500. The machine is bigger and heavier than normal laptops. But a great 15.4 inch screen :-) It got delivered to a friend's place in Bangalore, the taxes being lower there. So I head there.

My plan was to say no to the Microsoft EULA for Windows XP and then install Debian on it (note I had given up all hopes of getting a refund for Windows in India; this was purely on ideological grounds).

So I boot up the machine and the XP EULA promptly comes up. I say `no' and put in the Debian woody CD. Proceed to wipe all shreds of XP off the machine and get woody to boot up.

The great thing with Debian is the seamless upgrades to the latest versions (via apt-get). Not having network access at my friends place, him and me take the laptop to his office (did I mention he works at Cisco? ;-) )

Where we discover an interesting problem. Debian woody does not support the network card, a broadcom 4410. The broadcom driver is available on the net, but there is no way to get it on the machine without the network card working. Argh....

So we come back, and I accept defeat. Install XP on it and cry myself to sleep at night...(not really actually, but I almost did feel physically sick)

So I'm back in Hyderabad now. Waiting for this weekend so I can bring the machine to my company and download the driver via Windows XP and then get Debian to have network support. Then bye-bye XP.

Still, kudos to bill gates, he did make me use the damn thing...