Re: [tlug] Network completely down (was: Network annoyingly not starting on boot)

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Sach Jobb writes:

 > However, I can also remember a time not too long ago where during
 > installs I had to carefully copy around my precious X11 conf file
 > that took me weeks to perfect. I also remember spending very large
 > blocks of time dealing with my sound card. Now, in my experience at
 > least, for the most part hardware just works.

Yeah, but AIUI, that's because the hardware has gotten a lot smarter.
These days even your iPod earpips announce their version and interface
spec version when you plug them in.  And (except for SONY, Fujitsu,
NEC, and NVidia) the mfrs have gotten the news about providing a
standard-conforming API.  Not to mention that at least for video, the
smarts are now all in the X server itself.

Bottom line, I don't think the improvement in hardware compatibility
can be credited to smarter distro tools.