My head hurts :bsod:

I had to install a usb wifi dongle on another pc in the house which is now Linux 3 windows 1 :thumbsup:

So i plugged the dongle in only to be told i need to download a driver from a site and compile to use on the version of linux i was running or use a wrapper to use a windows drive within linux :wtf:

Well i downloaded the files and read the help file plus read loads of sites which had the title "How To Compile A Linux Driver For A Noob" but still didn't get how to do it :pcown:

So wondered if anyone can give me some tips / info on what you have to do for someone who comes before the word "Noob" so i can dream of being at that level :)

Lucky for me i found a site which was in a dark corner of the web about page 30 of google which had the file as a rpm which installed the driver for me "Thank God"

I never could make . config and stuff like that and get it to work.
I just search for a RPM file of what I need . then install it.
allways seems to work the best for me too.

The 'configure', 'make', and 'make config' stuff is an older way of running a script that comes with the driver that will find information about your linux installation (like where your compiler is, what compiler & version, where the library files are, etc), and then compile the code to run on your specific machine.

The new way is to let someone else do it for you and install the RPM or .deb or whatever. It's much easier. :)

deb & rpm are super easy (any windows noob could do it)

i remember when i first started playing with debian and slackware (before rpm/deb) and everything was download tar.gz or tar.bz2; decompress; removed from tar archive; configure; make; make install. then go figure out where the hell it installed it to. (assuming that you didnt have an error during any of the previous steps.)

deb & rpm are super easy (any windows noob could do it)

i remember when i first started playing with debian and slackware (before rpm/deb) and everything was download tar.gz or tar.bz2; decompress; removed from tar archive; configure; make; make install. then go figure out where the hell it installed it to. (assuming that you didnt have an error during any of the previous steps.)
I remember doing this once.
I kept getting error after error, after every error I would go download the missing files , install then configure, make, make install . untill it was done.
after that, I had allot of fun trying to find out where it was.
I could tell you , it was not on the desk top or in the start menue. lol.

I eventually just installed suse linux. did all the updates , got video drivers install and working. then made a true acronis image of the drive.
then i played and tore it up till it would not work no more, or it usualy still worked but I had so much stuff installed and had no idea where anything was.
I just reinstall from the image. complete isntall with all updates less than 5 minutes. .

I just need to get another good working pc to intsall linux on. the one I have keeps crashing on me. hardware problem. either process, mother board or power supply. ? ???