[gobolinux-users] Useful things for laptops

[Jonas Karlsson]

On Wed, 12 Jul 2006 13:52:59 +0200, Lucas C. Villa Real  
<lucasvr at gobolinux.org> wrote:

> On 7/12/06, Rohan Nicholls <rohan.nicholls at pareto.nl> wrote:
>> I thought of something else.  Automatic wireless network handling, so
>> mind your own business and if you are curious you can easily see if
>> there are any wireless networks available.  Actually easy wireless
>> network driver handling would be great.  A colleague of mine was
>> describing the process (find the windows driver, use the wrapper
>> program, and then, and then, "Oh, and it can be a bit flaky"), and I ran
>> away, but it is very handy, and again will be important for linux on the
>> desktop, as more and more the laptop/portable device will be the norm.
>
> I was just talking with Hisham about wireless support on Gobo
> yesterday. The big problem is that many drivers downloads its
> firmwares at modprobe time, and these firmwares are, as you can
> imagine, not freely (as in speech) distributed.

I have an Intel wireless card, for which I use ipw2200, and this module  
need firmware to work. I just read up on this as they've switched firmware  
version for the new version of ipw2200 I just installed, so I had some  
problems gettings my network up and running again. Anyhow, to me the  
firmware seems redistributable  
(http://ipw2200.sourceforge.net/firmware.php?fid=7) and I would love if  
these were bundled with our kernel recipe for instance.

For ndiswrapper, all you need is the windows driver (which you probably  
got with your nic) and to know if your card works  
(http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/mediawiki/index.php/List). Maybe we  
could send a snapshot of that list for our ndiswrapper recipe (partly for  
the users to see what driver works with what card)? The installation of  
ndiswrapper isn't that hard on GoboLinux as there's a recipe for it. The  
installation of the windows driver isn't that hard either once ndiswrapper  
is installed.

>
> I've written some scripts to help on the setup of wireless networks,
> but they're not that mature yet. We'll probably end with some basic
> support, but still relying on a Wiki "how to" entry to guide users on
> how to download firmwares and proceed with the initial steps.
>
I will look into Network Manager  
(http://www.gnome.org/projects/NetworkManager/), which is said to be the  
saviour for wireless networking on linux.
I think wpa_supplicant is quite nice for encrypted networks. It has a  
workable gui as well. It had issues with unencrypted networks earlier and  
I haven't tried it in an unencrypted network for a while (I have one at  
campus).

-- 
/Jonas

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