Reloading Experience--Wireless

[Howard Coles Jr.]

On Tuesday 29 May 2007 05:26:45 am Larry Hartman wrote:
> For those who are US citizens, hope you all had a good Memorial Day
> weekend.
>
> I had 4 days off and spent some of those four days reloading (K)ubuntu on
> my laptop.  I decided to do this because I first learned how to use Ubuntu
> on Dapper just before Edgy was released, and had upgraded twice to Feisty. 
> I made some mistakes in the initial loading process  that I just could not
> resolve that cost me abilities to use some w32codecs-related media.  So
> after wisdom from 8 months of use and improved packages I reloaded.
>
> My system is an HP dv8000 laptop that comes with two hardware difficulties.
> The first is ATI XPress 200M graphics.  FGLRX has come a long way in the
> past 8 months.  The other is the BCM4318 Air Force One wireless.  The
> BCM43xx module is too flaky with this card, so I went to NDISWrapper. 
> NDISWrapper was not so hard to get working, but Network Manager just would
> not play well. I eventually got nm to work ok, but never got my wireless to
> start immediately at boot.  So off to the Ubuntu forums I went.
>
> Someone on the forums--I think Compwiz18--posted about a networking tool
> called WICD.  It is a replacement for nm that is built in Python.  Here is
> the sourceforge website:
>
> http://wicd.sourceforge.net/pages/features.php
>
> Let me tell you that for the past 8 months  I spent hours on nm to get it
> to run properly--and only partly succeeded.  WICD, however, was set up in
> 15 minutes and working perfectly out of the box--it is a Debian package.  I
> suspect that many of Ubuntu/Kubuntu users out there would like to trade in
> nm for something better: well here is an opportunity to investigate.
>
> Oh, and BTW, my w32codecs-related media issues are completely resolved.  I
> also switched to Firefox from Konqueror, it simply works better on a couple
> key websites I visit.  Now I am less dependent on M$--and that is a good
> thing in my estimation.
>
> Larry

Thanks indeed.  These kinds of posts should show up more often.  I'll have to 
investigate the WICD, because I have completely forsaken NM because you can 
only have one NIC up at a time.  Stupid idea if you ask me.

I'm especially impressed that you got everything working on that HP, with the 
ATI card.  I had fits with the one I owned that had that Card in it, finally 
told HP to take it back.

-- 
See Ya'
Howard Coles Jr.
John 3:16!