Over the last weekend, I installed the Ubuntu 6.06 distribution of Linux on one of my old PIII laptops.

In short I must say I am really impressed with how polished Ubuntu has become for a free OS. I am treating this as a linux learning challenge for me to get to know linux a bit better. I thought what better than to install it on machine that I use for mainly web browsing and email while watching TV (how sad ).

The base install went fine but getting my DLink DWL-G650 Wifi card working turned out to be an interesting eye opener for how google-support (searching forums and web sites) works when you have linux. The shear range of solutions from people with similar hardware, OS, versions and problems ranged from re-compiling kernels right through to installing different wifi network stacks and everything else in between. Ubuntu was recognising my card but was unable to configure it to work on my network properly. It turned out all I needed to do was run this script:

sudo ifconfig ath0 up
sudo iwlist ath0 scan
sudo iwconfig ath0 key [key goes here]
sudo iwpriv ath0 authmode 2
sudo iwconfig ath0 essid "[SSID here]"
sudo dhclient ath0


I am impressed with how committed the linux community is to getting things to work and helping each other but I think the challenge for them is making this easy for your average joe who just wants his computer and hardware to work without much hassle. It seems to be a bit of minefield of solutions and you constantly have to check the solutions are for the same hardware, chip set, linux distribution, version, CPU etc. That said, I must admit the enjoyment of getting it working is increased when you have to hack around a bit!!

Anyway Ubuntu is definitely worth a look if you are Linux curious and running the LiveCD (same as the installer) is well worth a look.

-Gabe