I’m not that person, but most smaller distros back that weren’t the major ones (RedHat, Suse, Mandrake) had issues. Driver support from distro to distro was also very spotty, I remember having to hunt through to three of them in 2002 to finally get one to recognize my Ethernet chipset. Yes, Ethernet, not Wifi, which would have been understandable.
This is why Ubuntu was such a big deal when it came out, it was one of the few where things more or less “just worked” without having to chase proprietary or reverse engineered drivers down
Yes, Ethernet, not Wifi, which would have been understandable.
Back in the day there was ‘software NICs’ on the market which required separate (driver-ish) software to do anything. Also there was RTL chips which required propietary parts from a driver and all the fun stuff. On wifi it’s still a thing now and then, but everything works far better today, and it’s at least partially because hardware is better too. Of course even in late 90’s when ethernet started to gain traction you could just throw something like 3c509 or e100 to your box and call it a day, but standards were far less mature than they’re today.
I’m not that person, but most smaller distros back that weren’t the major ones (RedHat, Suse, Mandrake) had issues. Driver support from distro to distro was also very spotty, I remember having to hunt through to three of them in 2002 to finally get one to recognize my Ethernet chipset. Yes, Ethernet, not Wifi, which would have been understandable.
This is why Ubuntu was such a big deal when it came out, it was one of the few where things more or less “just worked” without having to chase proprietary or reverse engineered drivers down
I remember that even a graphical Installation was rare amongst distress which is why I briefly used Mandrake as one of my first.
Back in the day there was ‘software NICs’ on the market which required separate (driver-ish) software to do anything. Also there was RTL chips which required propietary parts from a driver and all the fun stuff. On wifi it’s still a thing now and then, but everything works far better today, and it’s at least partially because hardware is better too. Of course even in late 90’s when ethernet started to gain traction you could just throw something like 3c509 or e100 to your box and call it a day, but standards were far less mature than they’re today.