Mandrake 9.0

Just installed Mandrake's latest dist, ver. 9.0, and with fingers crossed (I 
lied but perhaps I should've!) I entered the network configuration stage 
and...yet again, another dist whose included tulip driver didn't work for me 
:-(

For Mandrake's previous 2 or 3 dists, I had to download Donald's tulip 
driver sources and compile them in order to get my Compaq Presario 17XL361 
notebook's Conexant NIC to work. I had hoped that the latest dist's included 
tulip driver would work.

I've been on this list for a while and have seen RedHat & Mandrake users 
lament the problems with tulip drivers included in those company's various 
dists.

I understand that there are various NICs that rely on the tulip driver in 
order to work in Linux. I think I recognized some model numbers on this list 
which belong to Linksys, which is a fairly popular brand for 'non-brand' 
PCs.

Do some tulip reliant NICs work with the tulip drivers compiled into RedHat 
& Mandrake dists or are all tulip users having to compile the tulip driver 
themselves?

Is there some technical reason why I won't see a 'working' default tulip 
driver for my NIC in a dist?

If it's just a matter of lack of testing/knowledge on this driver by the 
Linux dist companies then we should help and/or petition them to finally fix 
the problem.

Just in case I haven't been clear. I'm not criticising the tulip driver. I'm 
very grateful to Donald for developing it. Without it, I wouldn't be able to 
network my notebook under Linux (Compaq provide zero Linux support for it). 
I'm just a bit frustrated that dists include the tulip driver but have 
compiled it in a way that doesn't work with my NIC. It's quite funny 
(strange) because when I compile the driver myself, I use the parameters 
recommended by Donald and they work every time!

Cheers,
Scrumpy

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