Reloading Experience--Wireless

[Larry Hartman]

On Tuesday 29 May 2007 08:17:32 pm Howard Coles Jr. wrote:
> 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 haven't tried it with both my wired and wireless at the same time, but 
supposedly it is capable of managing both.

>
> 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.

A lot of patience and a little fighting, the software on the linux side is 
slowly catching up with the hardware.  Dapper was a real challenge--not so 
with Feisty.  I just think to myself if I would have jumped ship from M$ six 
months earlier I would be very disappointed with what I saw and I would still 
be using M$......  I will see how things progress over next year with AMD/ATI 
linux support.  I won't leave HP anytime soon.....I really like my 17" lappy, 
but the next one will probably be based on Intel/nVidia.