On Tuesday, August 19, 2003 8:28 AM, Josef Lowder wrote:
 
> For the time being, I've given up and returned the camera. 
> 
> At this time, I'm unwilling to upgrade my kernel or Mandrake-Linux 
> version because the last time I did so, it royally screwed up 
> my system and it took me several days to get crucial things
> working again.  

FWIW, kernel upgrades are usually a pretty harmless procedure.  If you
install the new kernel next to the existing one (instead of overwriting it),
you should be able to boot back into your working kernel if you run into
trouble.  I hear what you're saying about upgrading the entire distribution,
though.  In the past, I've ended up having to do a clean install when an
upgrade left my system in a less-than-usable state.  Although my upgrade
from RedHat 7.3 to RedHat 8.0 went smooth as silk, so there have been recent
improvements in that area.

> While I am a devoted Linux enthusiast, the problems associated with 
> continually having to upgrade and go through all of the 
> messes associated with that are terribly, terribly frustrating. 

I feel your pain.  Sometimes I want to just *use* my system instead of
tinkering with it.  The various Linux distributions have definitely made
great strides in usability (it used to take me at least a week to get sound
working again when I'd upgrade my old Slackware box (back in the 3.x days),
and now sound works "out of the box" when I upgrade or install RedHat), but
it still seems that a lot of things are easier to get working under Windows.
The first time I plugged my digital camera into my new laptop (which runs
Windows XP), a little box popped up telling me that I just plugged in my
camera and asking me what I wanted to do with the pictures.  Same with my
digital video camera.  (Of course, once you do get something working under
Linux, it usually *stays* working, which isn't always the case with
Windows.)

~Jeff