The gods of Linux smile upon me. They must do. I suspect it is something to do with having deeply incriminating pictures of Alan Cox in my possession, from our days as students.

Why, then, is it that I can make RedHat linux work essentially perfectly upon any hardware that I own, either by intention or by chance, yet as soon as someone brings me their laptop or computer, everything goes repeatedly kablooie?

I dunno – it’s a sort of reverse King-Midas thing, perhaps?