[NBLUG/talk] hsf softmodem trouble

[Dave Sisley]

On Fri, Sep 12, 2003 at 08:40:21PM -0700, Dave Sisley wrote:
> Hi, everybody.  In an effort to escape the vortex....

I gave up.

I went out to Circuit City and bought an external modem.  Plugged
it in, booted up, and kudzu found it and configured it.  A little
tweaking and I'm back on the internet.  

This whole experience has left me a bit frustrated with Linux - not
that I'd ever go back to windows.  It's just that one of the things 
that's great about linux is that it's made up of all these little 
programs that you can tweak and they all work together to make up the
whole experience.  The downside is that linux is made up of all these
little programs that you can break so that they won't work together, 
ruining the whole experience. (waaaaaah!)

I'll get over it soon...

This started for me with a 'simple' upgrade of XFree86 via apt-get.
Below is a map of my dizzying voyage through the vortex:

upgrade XFree86 to 4.3 -> need new video controller driver -> get 
new driver -> X breaks completely -> upgrade to rh9, which includes 
XFree86 4.3 and new drivers -> winmodem no longer works -> struggle
for days trying to get semi-proprietary 'generic' winmodem driver
to work on my box (no driver written specifically for fresh rh9 
kernel) -> go out and spend money on an external modem (BestData
serial faxmodem) -> ???? what will happen next ????

Besides venting steam, the point of this email is to ask the question:

Is there a better way to apply upgrades, or am I doomed to have this
happen every so often?  I really like apt-get; what I especially
like is that it handles dependencies.  Obviously, it was unable to 
handle my video driver.

Is there a better way?