I recently bought a new laptop i have been saving for.. heres the specs:

Processor - AMD Turion X2 TL-60 Dual-Core Mobile Processor

Display - 17.0" (diagonal) WXGA+ High-Definition BrightView Widescreen Display (1440 x 900)

Memory - 3072MB DDR2 System Memory

Total memory slots - 2 DIMM

Graphics card - Nvidia GeForce Go 7150M (UMA) with up to 1071MB Total Available Graphics Memory

Networking - Integrated 10/100BASE-T Ethernet LAN (RJ-45 connector)

Broadband wireless - 802.11b/g WLAN & Bluetooth

Primary CD/DVD drive - LightScribe Super Multi 8X DVD+/- R/RW with Double Layer Support

Hard drive - 250GB (5400RPM) Hard Drive (SATA)

---The Install---

I got home, and the first thing i did was back up windows and wipe the hard drive. Mandriva installed in about 2 hours via FTP. It automatically set up the proprietary software for the Nvidia card and everything else , including the 'quick touch' buttons.
Boots into login screen in about 50 seconds!
The screen looks sweet.
Extreamly fast.

THE PROBLEMS

#1 - After the first reboot (i downloaded 20000 packages for the first 2 days without restarting) -- The hard drive is constantly flashing 24/7 now, not completely maxed out, but very steadily flashing???? What could cause this? How can i see what it is doing besides a monitor application. If anyone has any information as to whats going on please help! everything works so good! how frustrating.

#2 - WIFI - its a

Atheros AR5007 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Card

I tried to use ndiswrapper but it is not supported. All the research i have done tells me that 'Atheros' helped write the 'madwifi' kernel mod. And that it should be supported. But its not. It is recognized but does not find any networks. That really sucks being that i bought the computer for college.

Sounds like a nice laptop, did you happen to try it out using windows?
I use Mandriva 2008.1 pwp and have wireless on my desktop and atheros worked perfect, even with my old D-link adaptor.
My friends new HP laptop had a bad wireless card right from the git go.

As far as the flashing HDD light I have no clue, since I don't have a laptop.
Good luck, and that was a good choice for your OS, I love it.

I'm guessing that the hard disk light is caused by something (or somethings) indexing the hard drive and will settle down, if left to itself, after a while.

Not sure about Mandrake's defaults, but locate/updatedb, Beagle/Kerry Beagle seem the most likely, but there are about four or five other candidates. It may show up in ksysguard, but the actual disk access part doesn't appear as being owned by the task indexing the disk and that makes it more difficult to spot.

-Well, after going through all the running 'system services', i turned each one that i did not need off. 'MythTV' was using the hard drive 24/7. Along with some other services i did not need. Now all is good on that end.

The computer boots to login screen in 45 seconds!

-----------------
I have researched alot about the atheros card. Acording to everything i read, linux should recognize it at boot,... which it does. (the wifi light goes on). Mandriva recognizes it, and tells me the exact name of it, and shows that it is there, but will not find any networks. All i have is 'eth0' and usually on other computers when the wifi card is working there is a 'eth1' also. When i right click on the network thingy on the task bar, and then click on the card i want to use 'atheros', it downloaded all the madwifi kernal modules and everthing and then i get

'Unable to find network interface for selected device using 'ath_pci driver'

what a bumer.

I had to install a bunch of stuff for my old computer, which had a broadcom
card. I had to get a 'cutter' to extract the firmware from the binary driver files.

Anyone using 2008.1 with an atheros card please help me!!

Hi, my only suggestion is to check out the networking (wireless) forum here at LQ.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...networking-41/

The gurus there will/may(I have no doubt) have the answers or the references you require.

Also there is always something around the corner that we don't see. So hang out if you can, the answer is coming soon to a web near you!

To be prepared for the question you will need to know the chipset of your wireless card, maybe you have done so(atheros!). It will make a difference to the responses you get(this is linux after all.)