In the library this afternoon, I tried connecting to the internet but wasn’t having much luck. Network Manager, Places, ping, and dig were all telling me my wireless connection was fine. Firefox, Chromium, and Evolution, however, disagreed with them.
Because it’s worked before, I haven’t changed anything since—updated, yes, but no configuration changes—and the librarian station was just the other side of the bench I sat at, I decided to pick Gadget (named for the Rescue Ranger) up and ask for help.
Excuse me. Is there anyone who can help with my wireless connection?
Is it Mac or ordinary?
Err… neither. It’s Ubuntu.
I’ve never heard of it.
She then explained that the library only had help-sheets for Windows and Mac, so I asked if I could look at them all, in hopes I could piece a solution together for myself. The screenshots (which actually included Firefox!) in the Windows help-sheets soon highlighted the issue, and a quick preference change to ‘auto-detect proxy’ broke the web-dam and let the internet flood in. The librarian was pleased they’d been useful when I returned the help-sheets; I was glad that I didn’t have to reboot into Windows.
It’s clear, though, that, in terms of public awareness, Linux still has a way to go.
And I wonder how the response would have differed, had I been using Fedora.