On 6/2/25 10:18 AM, Steve Matzura wrote:

guess I've been somewhat spoiled by that magic. But then again, I expect computers to do what they realistically cannot--behave like toasters--but even knowing that, I still expect a few basic things to just work, like finding my boot device, my audio device, my input device (keyboard) and my main communications device (NIC) and just make them work immediately. If I change any of those things, I want my operating system to figure that out, automatically load the correct driver, and carry on, all behind the scenes without any intervention from yours very truly. I know that most Linux systems come packed with lots of drivers for various hardware to get started, and these days, most hardware has pretty well-known and standard parts--RealTek audio devices, Broadcomm NIC's, and the like. And the operating system usually finds them all. Just not this time. That's the puzzler. Something's different, or missing, and I'm bound to find out what it is.

But it did recognize your network card, load a driver, and create a network interface. At this point, the odds are that you actually do have a network connection. I mentioned that you can start the debugging at the other end and assume the problem is with the router, firewall, something like that. That's what we should have done. The upside is that you learned a little about diagnosing network problems in Linux. But to go even further off the original topic, Linux systems admin is a really good career choice for a person with a visual disability. I don't mean to suggest that *Yyou* consider that. I'm just making the discussion even more general than it is after you brought up Linux itself. Where I live, In Madison, Wisconsin, a Linux sys admin can write his own ticket. Even a blind Linux sys admin  will have his choice of positions to accept. This is true of everywhere technology is the main driver of the economy. So that includes every university town in the USA plus whole regions of the country like Silicon Valley, , the Charlotte research triangle, etc. And the beauty of being a blind Linux sys admin is that you are barely at a disadvantage compared to your sighted counterparts. Every once in a while, you'll hit an accessibility snag. But almost everything is done via the command line and text files. The biggest problem, of course, is access to the BIOS/EUFI. But you're not any better off being a Windows sys admin when it comes to accessing  the EUFI.