At 5am, in the dark, I'm a genius
Apr. 4th, 2012 09:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceBy six am, I feel like an idiot again. Back in the dark again.
I have spent two days wrestling with computer, with Linux, with the internets and the display.
My first USB wifi adapter had no Linux driver at all, so I got another one. "It works out of the box!" said the internets. I should know by now, the internets will lie to me. I have to run a two-year-old version of Ubuntu to get any visuals at all; my secret plan was to get online and then download a graphics driver that actually understands my monitor, and go from there.
Last night, nobody had told my new USB adapter about my secret plan. It was happy to get me online in Windows, but in Linux? Nada. It comes with a CD, which includes a Linux driver! Could I make the shell script run? Nah. Could I extract the source code? Yes! Could I make the source code build a driver? Nah.
It came with a helpful document! Was the document helpful? Nah. It was barely even in English, and what it said didn't work.
Playing with the command line for me is like trying to get by in a foreign language when I haven't studied the grammar. When I'm talking to a total pedant who will refuse to understand anything that's not exact.
Anyway. I went to bed defeated. And lay awake half the night, trying not to think about it; and at 5am I figured out the missing step that the helpful document hadn't mentioned. It's not hard, but, y'know. Innocent abroad, etc. Non-geek trying to muddle through without having learned the code.
Anyway. At 6am I got up to try it. It worked. I can haz wifi.
Except.
You knew there would be an exception, didn't you?
Except it recognises our home network - and refuses to recognise the entirely correct password when I enter it. I do not get this, at all. We have rebooted the router, and it makes no difference. Which leaves me wondering if I cocked up the build after all, if I have somehow made a broken driver that can sort-of function but not fully, not to the point of sending passwords. Is that even possible? I dunno.
Anyway. At the moment I'm working in Windows - *waves from Windows* - and playing in Linux, being a little baffled again and increasingly frustrated, and... Yeah. Nothing new, except this is new to me with Ubuntu, which has always been a just-works distro for me up till this. Grr.
Also I haven't figured out how to fix the display driver. I had to use a two-year-old iteration of Ubuntu to get anything but a black screen, and what I'm working with is an ugly default driver that's not usable long-term. I really shoulda been a geek, y'know. Not quite sure what happened there, I had it all going for me when I was eight...
I have spent two days wrestling with computer, with Linux, with the internets and the display.
My first USB wifi adapter had no Linux driver at all, so I got another one. "It works out of the box!" said the internets. I should know by now, the internets will lie to me. I have to run a two-year-old version of Ubuntu to get any visuals at all; my secret plan was to get online and then download a graphics driver that actually understands my monitor, and go from there.
Last night, nobody had told my new USB adapter about my secret plan. It was happy to get me online in Windows, but in Linux? Nada. It comes with a CD, which includes a Linux driver! Could I make the shell script run? Nah. Could I extract the source code? Yes! Could I make the source code build a driver? Nah.
It came with a helpful document! Was the document helpful? Nah. It was barely even in English, and what it said didn't work.
Playing with the command line for me is like trying to get by in a foreign language when I haven't studied the grammar. When I'm talking to a total pedant who will refuse to understand anything that's not exact.
Anyway. I went to bed defeated. And lay awake half the night, trying not to think about it; and at 5am I figured out the missing step that the helpful document hadn't mentioned. It's not hard, but, y'know. Innocent abroad, etc. Non-geek trying to muddle through without having learned the code.
Anyway. At 6am I got up to try it. It worked. I can haz wifi.
Except.
You knew there would be an exception, didn't you?
Except it recognises our home network - and refuses to recognise the entirely correct password when I enter it. I do not get this, at all. We have rebooted the router, and it makes no difference. Which leaves me wondering if I cocked up the build after all, if I have somehow made a broken driver that can sort-of function but not fully, not to the point of sending passwords. Is that even possible? I dunno.
Anyway. At the moment I'm working in Windows - *waves from Windows* - and playing in Linux, being a little baffled again and increasingly frustrated, and... Yeah. Nothing new, except this is new to me with Ubuntu, which has always been a just-works distro for me up till this. Grr.
Also I haven't figured out how to fix the display driver. I had to use a two-year-old iteration of Ubuntu to get anything but a black screen, and what I'm working with is an ugly default driver that's not usable long-term. I really shoulda been a geek, y'know. Not quite sure what happened there, I had it all going for me when I was eight...