Linux Configuration

Animal · Last edited by Animal on Tue Jan 03, 2006 2:19 am; edited 1 time in total

I'm currently looking into using Linux for software testing and possibly a small amount of development. I've tried so far using some Live distros (Knoppix and Damn Small Linux) and one installed distro (Linspire) as a dual-boot with my WinXP Pro machine. I've not been able to get drivers for my built-in Wireless networking card to work on any of these distros though.

I've got an Intel Pro/Wireless 802.11b/g Mini-PCI card on my laptop. I need to be able to use this for access to the internet, and unfortunately, if I can't get a driver for it then I woun't be able to use Linux properly. In case anyone's thinking it, I also can't connect using a cable since the web connection is wireless-only. Does anyone have any suggestions, or know of drivers I could use? And if so, is there any way to "streamline" the driver into a live distro, or would I need to use a full-install? As I said, it's simply for software testing etc, so wouldn't be used too often - this is why a live distro would be better, but a reasonably small, unobtrusive install wouldn't be the end of the world.

If there aren't any drivers for my network card on Linux, I would be open to suggestions for other USB or PCMCIA WLAN cards that are Linux compatible, but I don't want to have to spend much money on them.

Thanks for any help you guys can offer!

longjack

VMWare ??

http://www.vmware.com/download/ws/eval.html

VmWare will boot Linux iso's into a virtual machine on your PC. I think it may be good for what you want to do.

30 day free trial.

longjack

Animal

Hi Longjack,

Thanks for the suggestion, but I'm not sure if this is entirely suitable - maybe you could give me an idea on this?

If I run Linux as a Virtual Machine, will it use the Windows internet connection, or will it try to establish a connection itself? Part of the program testing / development involves email, so I need to actually be able to send it through Linux rather than just use the shell to run a program and access an email in Windows.

It's a good idea though - I'll probably look into it for simply running Linux, but as I said, I'm not sure if it'll be sufficient for program testing.

root

Animal, please do not listen to the above post. There is absolutely no reason that you have to use VMware to connect to the internet. The drivers for that particular card should be available. I'm guessing you arn't doing something right when you're trying to use your wireless connection. Let me know more about the problem at hand.

Thanks,

David

Naif

The ipw2200 driver should work with your card. Refer to this page for download and installation instructions: http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Ipw2200

123456aaa

it is a good ware

Animal

jovemac

hey animal!

The easiest advise is that UBUNTU LINUX live which automatically detects the network and makes to connect the net without much of compications. Have a try.. I am having fun with that comfortably. Please let me know your feedback in this regard.

Animal

Yeah, I tried Ubuntu live and it is great. I even managed to get my wireless card working, so no complaints form that point.

The only thing is that it took more than 5 mins to load and was quite slow because it constantly accesses the CD. I know this is a limitation of Live Linux distros - I've tried Damn Small Linux and Knoppix too.

I want to use the full install instead of constantly loading the live CD version, so I'll be using Ubuntu. I just need to wait until I've got time to configure it all to run how I want it.

Thanks for the tip though, and thanks to everyone for their advice on this.

Kd527

That's one of my problems with Linux. It doesn't have a lot of hardware support yet. There's very likely workarounds, but it might not be easy. Try http://www.linuxquestions.org/.