[Discuss] Wireless on Laptop

[John Blomfield]

Murray Strome wrote:
> John Blomfield wrote:
>> Murray Strome wrote:
>>> Some time ago, I asked for help in trying to get a Live CD or DVD 
>>> LINUX distribution that would properly recognize and configure my 
>>> wireless card, which is:
>>> Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG
>>>
>> I have an Intel Pro/Wireless 2915BG in my laptop and Fedora 8 Live 
>> KDE and Fedora 8 Live Gnome makes it work right out of the box. No 
>> problem.
>>
>> John Blomfield
>>
>>> I had no luck with Knoppix nor with Ubuntu (though Ubuntu at least 
>>> recognized the card).
>>>
>>> On a whim, I just downloaded Mandriva One 2008 CD and tried it. It 
>>> worked flawlessly!  Also, my sound card works great with it, as does 
>>> Flash with Firefox.  For what I have tried to this point, it appears 
>>> to be faster than either (K)Ubuntu or Knoppix. Admittedly, I haven't 
>>> tried too many things.
>>>
>>> Although I have come to like a lot about Kubuntu, at least for now, 
>>> I will likely be playing with Mandriva on the laptop.
>>> _______________________________________________
> Steve Nelson wrote
>>>> Hmmmm
>>>>
>>>> I have the same card in my Dell XPS laptop and Kubuntu recognized 
>>>> it out of the box -- I did have to download the restricted drivers, 
>>>> but that is no big deal either.
>>>>
>>>> It seems weird that it didn't work for you with Kubuntu.
>>>>
>>>> Steve
> Steve: Did you INSTALL Kubuntu, or were you using the Live CD/DVD?  
> That might be the difference.  I have not tried Fedora.
> John: With Live KDE Fedora, is it relatively easy to make it 
> "persistent", i.e. use an external drive to save all configuration 
> changes, install new software, update old software, and save documents 
> etc. in /home/<user>?  If so, I might give it a try when I get time.
>
I have installed Fedora 8 using a Live KDE CD on three computers so far, 
including and laptop but I have been experimenting with just running the 
Live KDE (not installed ) prior to taking it on my travels.  In fact I 
created a Live version on a 2G Pen Flash Drive and the pen provides some 
"persistent" storage,  In the case of the Live CD you can save data also 
by using a USB Pen Drive or presumably a USB external drive, just mount 
the drives in the normal way and copy files to them.  I am not sure 
about whether you would be able to access a eSATA external drive?  If 
you are using a Live CD I don't think it would be possible to update any 
software because the "old" packages are on the read only CD and can't be 
changed but on a Pen Drive it may be possible?  My laptop BIOS treats 
the Pen Drive like another Hard Drive and not as a "removable drive".  
In the boot sequence you have to set the Pen Drive as the 1st Hard Drive 
to get it to boot, it will not recognize the Pen Drive as USB media.  
All this is very BIOS dependent; my main computer is now 3 to 4 years 
old and its BIOS will not boot from a Pen Drive, it just does not 
recognize it at boot time either as USB or HD.

I have also been looking at Fedora's "livecd-tools" which enable you to 
create a custom CD iso which you can then burn on a CD or Pen Drive as a 
Live image or a normal Install image.  livecd-tools creates the iso by 
downloading the packages you want using Red Hat's kickstart file format 
for administrator network installs etc.  This of course means you get 
the latest packages at the time of creation.  The tools ensure that all 
the dependencies are taken care of and there are sample kickstart files 
to ensure you get a basic working system that you can add to or subtract 
from.

John Blomfield

> Murray
>
> Murray
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