Comment 12 for bug 300784

Re Broadcom agnosticism: Don't know. The regression I noted may have been a result of the way I tested. I may have messed up along the way. That's why I'm waiting for my Jaunty box to pick up Tim's fix - I have more confidence in what Tim &co are doing to get me a stable kernel and drivers than I do in what I am doing. If it all works properly under Jaunty, then I'm going to assume it can be made to work under Intrepid and I may try to figure out that path. I may even try figuring it out under Hardy, if my daughter will let me touch her machine.

That said, talking to hardware is notoriously difficult. The Broadcom driver may be agnostic, but they may also have broken something for somebody else - for example, by correcting a "well known error" that was being dealt with otherwise elsewhere by others.

Note the tap dancing - only an experienced driver hacker can say for sure. Tim? Colin? Bueller?

Re running screaming back to Windows: I sympathize, I really do. It is extremely frustrating to take something that works under an otherwise borked OS-wannabe and have it fail spectacularly under a real OS. It's at times like these that I remember I switched for reasons of principle, accepting some inconvenience along the way. But that's another story, not for the bug report.

Re DELL support: I believe you 100%. But I know that many/most users are going to call their vendor for support unless they are given an "it just works without me doing much" solution. So recommending an alternative that borks their paid-for support must always be our last step. We need to find solutions that work for most everyone, with minimal effort, while preserving the benefits of LTS and of vendor-supported hardware. After all, there isn't a lot of it out there, putting it at risk risks much negative - if misinformed - feedback.