A recent experience

stu_mueller · 05-28-2008, 02:20 AM

I have just tried to install Ubuntu 8.04 on a friends PC. The install went OK, but it took me two days trying to get the wireless card to connect to my network. XFCE wouldn't log in hte first time unless auto login was enabled.

In the end I wiped it off and put Slackware on. It took me about two minutes to get it connected to my wireless network! and all is now running wonderfully.

I was going to install Suse on my sons laptop, to try that out, but I think I will give it a miss and just install Slackware :-P

tommcd · 05-28-2008, 04:13 AM

Just out of curiosity, what wireless chipset and driver is being used, and how did you go about setting them up in Ubuntu and Slackware?

T3slider · 05-28-2008, 06:06 AM

Just because Ubuntu sucked doesn't mean SUSE does. There was almost definitely a relatively easy way to get the network up and running (though maybe not as easy as Slackware if you know what you're doing) in Ubuntu -- but I don't blame you for switching. However, though I don't use it myself, OpenSUSE is a really nice distro. I'm not a fan of YaST or RPMs, but if I had to choose a distro other than Slackware (and possibly Debian), OpenSUSE would probably be it.

stu_mueller · 05-28-2008, 07:24 AM

The PC in question uses a Marvel USB device. I used ndiswrapper with the net255.sys driver and hte built in network config tools, is it nm-applet?

I also tried another usb wireless device, a belkin one that works fine with my zenwalk machine. this didn't require ndiswrapper as hte rt2500usb drivers were automatically detected, however this still wouldn't connect. I say it wouldn't connect, it would for a bit then it would drop out, then it wouldn't connect. It was very unreliable.

In slackware I simply used ndiswrapper, and edited rc.wireless.conf and hte marvel device connected straight away.

I am still in two minds about trying Suse. I would like to as we are starting to use Suse at work, so I would get some experience of it for working with, but now I know slackware it seems so simple to use, and hte config files for suse (particuarly the network) seem very similar to ubuntu.

I like the way Linux allows choices, but sometimes those choices can be hard to make ;-P