AAAAHHHH I need help
 

I'm here because I am new to Linux and I desperately need your help.

I have been a Windows user for ever. I have had a desire to learn linux for a long time but have not had the chance. I'm here now and I like the look of SLED 10.1. I like everything about the apps and the interface. I really, really , really want to make it work on our network at work but am having the time of my life getting to work.

I'm doing this because I want to give people more OS options than just a windows environment. I an having 2 big problems that are keeping me from proceeding.

1.Most people use laptops in our environment. there is a big group that use our campus wide wireless. however the laptop that I am using SLED 10.1 on does not even see the wireless card.
2.When connected via a wire as I am now, I can access the internet as you can see by this posting. however, I don't see how to connect to the Domain to access the windows resources. I enter the domain name and it acts like it is doing something but I can't access anything.

This is me pulling my hair out!!! Please help. I do sincerely want to get this working but I am more frustrated than happy. I am so committed to doing this that I even setup a SLED 10.1 machine at home to replace my windows machine. I have SLED 10.1 and Xandors on it. Xandros works like a CHARM. I can even install printers and everything. the only thing I don't like about it is that it does not look very professional. I can handle that for home but i would be fired at work.

Please help

First off, try posting your thread with an actual useful title (e.g. wireless and domain set-up on SLED 10.1). Many people around here simply ignore posts titled "Help me" or similar because there's no useful information about what the person actually needs help with.

As for your wireless, what kind of card do you have? Have you checked if there's a native Linux driver or if you have to use something like NDisWrapper to get it working? Google can be a gigantic help here.

To connect to a domain to access Windows file and print servers you use a tool called Samba, which is included by default with SuSE. Since my home and workplace are all *nix environments I don't know a huge amount about it, but if you use Google and ask specific questions when you come across something you don't understand you will get help.

If you are seriously introducing SLED into your company and are posting "AAAAHHHH I need help" on an internet forum perhaps you should consider purchasing and utilizing a real support contract. If you are assuming you do not need one, are you correct?

And this is why it is so hard to get into Linux. There is no helpful information. I’m coming to you guys because I am serious about getting into Linux and what I get are instructions on how to post.

I’m a newbie and that’s why I can to the newbie section. It will do me no good to post something in the network section because I won’t know what 80% of the stuff is. I’m not going to buy a support contract when I am investigating the options. I’m sure that if we make the decision to go, we will buy a contract but not before we make the commitment. With that said, I’m trying to make the right decision when I know very little about Linux. I thought you guys would be eager to show me how to show my organization the benefits of Linux.

btmiller,
Thank you for your suggestion to post this with the appropriate title. I thought that I did for a newbie. The wireless card is the standard wireless card that comes in all the Dell Letitude and Inspiron laptops. I have come across things that I don't understand. That's why I posted.

2damncommon,
Well, I just don't know how to reply. I really thought that you guys would be helpful and not condescending. I'm hoping that I just cought you on a bad day.

please post the actual card model make etc etc
google it, better yet if it is a standard card then try dells website for a linux driver,

i just looked at dell's website they have suse linux drivers

Oddly, that is why I posted as I did.
I work for a large corporation that still runs Windows 2000. I am not in IT. I would love for them to allow me to demo SLED and report on problems/sucess.
btmiller gave you great short answers to the 2 issues you asked about and I brought up the issue of real support if needed and you blame Linux in general with, "And this is why it is so hard to get into Linux. There is no helpful information. I’m coming to you guys because I am serious about getting into Linux and what I get are instructions on how to post.".
My question, "If you are assuming you do not need one, are you correct?" is in no way an insult but a question to a Linux newbie attempting to introduce Linux into a business.

In the real world a company would not care if Xandros does not look "professional" as long as it is a viable solution to their problem. If Xandros works out of the box then you should go further and try it out on other workstations/laptops.
If SLED is becoming a struggle on one workstation then it may continue to be a struggle on every different system you decide to implement.

If Xandros does what is required then that sounds like your solution.

Then I'm sorry and I thank you.

Understand that I'm so frustrated because I have always been able to figure things out but with this, I am ready to toss it off the balcony.

The samba answer was great but in SLED there is nothing that is called Samba, that's why it was not helpfull to me. however, indirectly, i fugured it out.

In Windows we normally do this:
\\server\share

In linux I just discovered that it is:
smb://server/share

So now it is a matter of the wireless card and SLED.

It does, I was totaly impressed with it. I was able to authenticate to AD, it took the group policies, it accessed the printers and shares. the only thing that it did not do automaticaly was the login scripts but I can understand that.

If you are asking how to get the wireless card to work ... we will need to know exactly what card model it is.

Could you directly? I went to their site and did a search for the wireless driver wor a Latitude D800 and it did not find anything. I also went trough their support downloads section and it did not give mey anything for linux.

This would be great help since this is the last of the known problems.

The card is: Intel PRO/Wireless 2200 WLAN (802.11b/g, 54Mbps)

This might help?

http://en.opensuse.org/HCL/Network_Adapters_(Wireless)

You're in luck -- the Intel Pro 2200 wireless chipset is quite easy to get working in Linux. You might want to check the driver home page, from which you can download the driver itself and the firmware. You will need to have the kernel-source package installed to be able to compile the driver (you can use the package manager in YaST to install it, but I don't use SuSE so I can't give much more help than that).

Apparently there are is also an RPM for the firmware available from http://rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/suse/10...10.noarch.html but make sure you have the right version to go with the driver you get. Alternatively this page suggests you can just install the firmware RPM and the non-GPL kernel RPM and that will have the necessary drivers (that page is for 10.0 but I imagine the procedure for 10.1 is similar).

It might be easier to try going from RPM first and then compiling the driver from source if that doesn't work. I've used this driver extensively on Fedora and it works like a champ. Intel tends to be very good at supporting Linux, even if I don't like their binary firmware blobs. As always, post back here if you have trouble getting it to work.