Hello all

I installed Vector Linux 7.0 (a clone of Slackware 13.37) on the T42 to check that all worked. I would have stuck with it but for the fact that there are no updates to Firefox / Opera. Everything worked out of the box.

So I installed Slackware 14.1. I am not able to configure the laptop to 'see' wireless points. I ran 'netconfig' to no luck. Should I use NetworkManager ? How ?

Update : I used iwconfig and saw eth1 (or 01).

What do I do next ?

Thank you

The old-school way of configuring up wireless in Slack is the file /etc/rc.d/rc.wireless.conf. I'm not sure how popular that is any more.

I've usually had better luck by installing wicd. It is in the extras directory so is not installed through a "full" install, but is included on the DVD. NetworkManager is also an option but hasn't worked so well for me personally. There's a quick intro to both under "Graphical Network Configuration Services" here: http://docs.slackware.com/slackware:beginners_guide

First check and see if your wireless card is recognized as a wireless card. You can do that by running iwconfig. It should show your ethernet and lo with "No wireless extensions", but hopefully you have a wlan0 that shows a bunch of information. If your card is not recognized, we need to tackle that before anything else and the way to start would be showing us the output of lspci -knn|grep -A3 net so we can determine what network devices you have in your system.

If your card is recognized, the most common way to connect to networks is via the included NetworkManager (@repentorperish, rc.wireless.conf use is deprecated). Wicd is also an option, but you'll need to install it separately. To use NetworkManager, you'll need to make the startup script executable and then start the script. You can do that via the following:

Once that is done, you should be able to connect to networks via the nm-applet program that is residing in your system tray.