this is a test post.

--Dell Laptop: linux-image-2.6.24-rc8 and wireless 1/26/08--

I bought a wireless router. I dual boot windows and linux on my laptop. I was getting good reception with windows, but not with linux, so I decided that I needed to try out different options with my wireless to try to get better reception.

I was using bcm43xx, but as I say, the signal was always week. I tried out ndiswrapper. I had tried out ndiswrapper once before without success, but they are constantly updating...

This text originally comes from somewhere else. On top of that it's outdated, as the current kernel in lenny has passed the kernel being written about in this post. However the post shows a couple of things, like how to edit the kernel line in grub, and that the 'noapic nolapic' option was necessary for the 2.6.22 kernel for the Inspiron 1521. Also of note with regard to this post is that I only have dial-up internet access at home. I had to go someplace else and find a wireless hotspot for broadband...

--New Computer : Upgrade to Lenny--

So I had the wifi working with bcm43xx, and I had two systems, one amd64 and one i386. I went over to a friends house and updated to lenny on both systems. At the time the i386 system was still almost unusable because of the time it took to boot up, nearly 10 minutes. I changed the 'sources.list' file on both partitions. After a long time running 'aptitude update' and 'aptitude full-upgrade' I got both installations up to a current version of lenny....

This post was written previously. I include it here so that maybe other people can benefit from this long story of how I got my laptop to finally work, and because I like posting to blogs.

--New Computer--
Well, I've got a new computer. It's a Dell Laptop Inspiron 1521. It's great, but now I'm trying to put linux on it. I'm using debian linux, and my goal is to run 'lenny', or what they also call 'testing'. I still have dial-up at home, but the computer has a wireless card, so...