Hi,

Has anyone out there tried dreamlinux, http://www.dreamlinux.com.br/english/index.html. It looks interesting. Download looks a bit slow. I was just wondering before I started with it. With all the other releases I have problems with my wireless pcmcia card, bcm4306 chip. THanks

Well, in the deep it's a distribution which uses Linux kernel (hence "Linux OS"), which is the same among them all - maybe with different patches or a different version, but same codebase anyway. The desktop is very probably one of KDE, Gnome or XFCE - others can be installed. All the software that comes is out there for all the other distributions, somebody has just made a certain decision of what software to package into a "Dreamlinux", so basically it's just up to you to decide which logo you want to see.

Now that the above is cleared, let's get to your wireless woes. BCM4306 belongs to the infamous "bcm43xx" series of wireless cards from Broadcom, which is said to be troublesome under Linux - I wrote "said to", because it is up to you how troublesome it will be If it causes problems on some distributions for you, it's very likely to be the same with any distribution you pick up. It's not up to the desktop used in the distribution, but the kernel module that handles the card, and shortly said, for that there are two alternatives:
1) native bcm43xx (could be named differently nowadays) module, which either works or needs fwcutter+windows drivers to work, depending on the chipset
2) ndiswrapper+windows drivers

For WPA encryption (instead of WEP, for example) both will want wpa_supplicant, which is considered trickier to install and configure than either of those (fwcutter/ndiswrapper). That's rubbish, it's easy as what - mainly just one command (ap/authentication information), maybe a small change in the configuration file and that's it.

So..if you like the outlook of Dreamlinux and the apps it provides right out of the box (remember: you can always install any piece of software you like, or switch, or remove, if you don't like it; either there is a nice binary package available for you, or at least you can compile those from source if nothing else -- usually it's the binary path to go) then get it. If you don't, then don't get it, get something else. But I guess I'm not wrong if I say your wireless card won't work right out of the box even if you install it -- you will have to get your hands on some manual work. So consider this purely a "how do you feel" choice, rather than "better than the other" choice.

For your wireless I can give some clues. Search for FWcutter and search for NDISwrapper. You can pick either one, even install both at the same time, but only use one at a time (otherwise they may interfere and that won't help). I haven't used fwcutter - didn't know it existed when I started working with my bcm43xx - but it's said to be easy. Basically install it, run a command to extract a piece of the Windows drivers and store it onto your disk, and have the native bcm43xx driver work happily ever after...or install ndiswrapper, use it to "install" the Windows driver (so you'll need the Win driver files anyway - .sys and .inf for ndiswrapper, for example), blacklist the native driver to make sure it won't interfere (means one command) and that's it. After that's working (you'll test it: can your card now sniff and detect some access points?), have WPA encryption by installing wpa_supplicant, running wpa_passphrase [needed information here] >> /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf, opening the conf file in a text editor and making sure it looks okay (the only option you'll might want to change is ap_scan to 2 instead of 1 or 0 -- this is if you use ndiswrapper). And that's basically it..there are good, multiple, long, short, thorough, easy-to-understand, meta-distribution-specific (they really work for each distribution) and maybe even native language howtos for fwcutter, ndiswrapper, wpa_supplicant and especially for bcm43xx cards - so you're not alone. There is more than enough information, so just go and get it.

Note: there are two things I would check before trying out a distribution that should become my operating system for longer than two weeks: 1) how's the community and overall support, including updates, and 2) is it likely to stay alive and work all right (what do people say about it, if they say anything at all -- this is always a sign of something), or does it look like a seven day miracle?

Hi,

From your response I see that you have been around the block with Linux. With all of the Linux releases I have tried I always have trouble with the the wireless connection. I have been successful with Fedora but it is slow to load and run. Now I have dual boot pclinuxos and mepis 6.5. I prefer the mepis 6.5 but I still cannot get the wireless to function. I have tried the firmware route but I receive various errors about invallid calls to functions or microcode errors. Whenever I use ndiswrapper I can see the networks using knetworkmanager or wlassistant but I cannot connect to them. With knetworkmanager I get as far as 28% then nothing. I am thinking now of persevering with the bcm43xx method and dropping ndiswrapper. With the bcm43xx firmware methos there sees to be issuses of which firmware module to use. I have a wpc54g pcmcia card with no version number. The lspci -n is the 1420 number. I have been using the version 1 driver from the linksys web site. If you have any help on this I would be thankful. THanks for your help.

joe

I can't help thinking life was so much better -and more secure- with wired internet connection. Burn these Broadcom cards anyway.

Sorry to dig up this old thread.

Dreamlinux had come a long way since your discussions from a little more than a year ago.

I believe these discussions were held from around the time of the Dreamlinux 3.0beta releases.

Since then, DL3.0 had been fixed with 3.1, .2 and the current stable release is DL3.3

There is a DL3.5rc4 available for testing right now and we're looking forward to the 3.5Final in about a month's time.

When you guys get around to reading this, I hope you'll give Dream another spin.
You'll be pleasantly surprised

And just to add: they were "discussing" a 2.X and it's attitude towards wireless... we've come a long way since (as nearly every distro), but had a strong focus on easy-setup wireless (in fact there was so much discussion about it, i have decided to get one myself )
And talking about community....it's up and running since January the first, this year and cannot be compared with the "forum" DL had at the time, this thread was started.
And now we have come to LQ to offer help where we can in Dreamlinux-subforum.
Hope you'll give it a try !
@nno