For ages I’ve toyed with running Linux on the ex-lease Sony Vaio I’ve got. When I first picked it up, Centrino was a dirty word as far as Linux was concerned, so it’s been a Windows box all along. But now that the lease is over and it’s all mine, I decided to take the plunge.
The announcement of Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft) gave me an additional prod. I had a DVD of Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (Dapper Drake) that I figured I could install and upgrade to Edgy, and that process went alarmingly well. Even installing kubuntu-desktop was painless. It looks like a really well-integrated distro with just the right amount of knobs and dials to keep me running.
Or so I thought, until it came time to get wireless working. I run WPA, and the network config tools in Dapper don’t grok it. I figured that Edgy would be an improvement, but alas not. I’ve tried just about every network config tool available, in both GNOME and KDE, with no luck.
About the closest I’ve managed to get was using kwlan, but it seemed to get confused in trying to save the configuration and activate the link. Start wpa_supplicant prior to configure, and things seem to save but nothing activates. With wpa_supplicant stopped, I cannot save a profile.
I’ve seen forum notes that recommend downloading and building CVS versions of NetworkManager and wpa_supplicant — seems to go against the Ubuntu ethos a bit in my mind (if I’ve got to build stuff from source, I might as well be running Gentoo on it).
So I’m wired, but not for sound. I like (K)Ubuntu though, so much so I’m downloading a Xubuntu install CD to try it out on a low-spec laptop I am trying to make use of. Time will tell if the Edgy Eft is just visiting or gets to say a while. 🙂
Crossed Wires 