Truth, Computing and Fail

I compiled a vanilla kernel (2.6.21.3) for the first time on Edgy. Nothing much to write in detail about it. There are tons of tutorials on the net detailing the procedure. I followed this one.

Though I got a bit confused at one of the build steps. From the tutorial:

fakeroot make-kpkg --initrd --append-to-version=-custom kernel_image kernel_headers

The explanation that follows it:

After –append-to-version= you can write any string that helps you identify the kernel, but it must begin with a minus (-) and must not contain whitespace.

What it actually means that replace the custom string in the above command with anything of your choice, but the strings kernel_image and kernel_headers are absolutely necessary.

Two hours from now I will be leaving my hostel and heading for my home. Finally the drudgery of end sem exam has come to an end. Keeping in mind I don’t have a broadband connection at home and linux is notorious for its support (or rather lack of it) for internal modems, I decided to run the scanModem tool and ask the experts at the linmodems mailing list about my type of chipset. So I came to know it was a Conexant HSF modem. But now came the biggest problem. The driver for this modem was not open source. This is provided by some 3rd party called Linuxant. The free version of the driver limits speeds to 14.4 kbps only. To get the modem working at full speed, you need to purchase a license for a fuckin US $20 or something like that. I mean wtf. Here we are working on an open source system, trying out open source software and there is this company taking advantage of the user’s helplessness as linux support for internal modems is so sparse. There does exist some ports of this paid driver, but I didn’t find one for Edgy. So there I say goodbye to my hopes on makng dialup work on linux.

You can follow the discussion here at linmodems mailing list.