First off...apologies in advance for the coming rant! It is out of frustration, not intended as a personal attack on anybody. In spite of the rant, thanks all for your help.
Last night I gave up! I just spent a couple of weeks getting my dual-booted Win2K installation back after a Microsoft update broke it, and I broke the Linux installation in the process of trying to use it to fix the Windows installation. That took two threads totalling close to 200 posts on my favorite and most effective support newsgroup.
To my great disappointment, I've been looking for help on this Linux problem on 5 or 6 newsgroups and forums, and haven't had more than a small handful of responses, none of which have begun to make progress towards solving the problem. Perhaps the worst is the Automatix forum - use of Automatix marked the start of the problem - whose moderator used to so vigorously defend Automatix on another Linux forum as stable and not deserving of the criticism it was receiving.
I guess I'm tired of fixing and need to get back to using my computers. Therein lies the difference between those for whom Linux is a playground and those for whom it is a tool.
Last night, not having made any progress towards undoing the unwanted changes made by Automatix, I attempted to simply reinstall Kubuntu Dapper to get back to where I started - intending to not use Automatix, but be satisfied with a plain-Jane Kubuntu installation. Unfortunately, even that didn't work. The Kubuntu installation stalled at 70% - something I've seen somneplace in another post, but can't remember where. When it wouldn't budge, and I couldn't seem to do anything to recover, I powered down. That broke Grub - error 15 - and I had to go back to my Win2K install disk's recovery console to repair the MBR to be able to boot into anything (Win2K) - learning to do that was one good result of the Win2K fiasco.
At this point, I have a bootable and working Win2K, but no Linux. Whether or not I will again try to install Kubuntu is in question. It depends on how long it takes the frustration to be forgotten. I just had a tooth extracted, and that's helping take the edge off my Linux frustration by distracting me - though I'm not sure which is less desireable!
Yesterday I read a highly arrogant blog entry in which the writer told about it being time to dump Linux because it was now too easy and thus boring compared to when it was exciting 10 years ago. Of course, he wasn't writing to Linux noobs, but preaching to his own choir, so perhaps it's not fair for me to criticize. He implied that any who questioned Linux being ready for the desktop were stupid because it was ready long ago. My experience just reaffirms that folks like him have a very short-sighted view of where the real desktop market is, and that it appears that Linux is still not ready to challenge Windows or Mac in that market - perhaps for the experienced, but not for the general public who want to use, not tinker.
I'm sure this post is inviting flames, but now and then a rant isn't all bad.
Optiker
