wi-fi distro

[blu.gecko]

Hello all,

1st time thread.


I am looking for a live distro so that I do not have to loose all my data on my compaq laptop, it has all but 40 gigs, i tried ubuntu 4.10 live and it didnt pick up my broadcom wireless.

any help would be great.

[Icarus]

hmmm....ok....
What is the laptop model and the wireless card make/type? these are very important things to know when asking for help

Also check out http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/ and see if they list that laptop...

Knoppix recognizes and setups up my wireless card (IPW2100) with no problems. But if you have a card that is unsupported in Linux there is nothing anyone can do

[mrBen]

Knoppix (http://www.knoppix.com) is definitely worth a look.

[XiaoKJ]

wi-fi is not friendly to linux on any distro. Gd Luck....

I recommend learning that last.....

[moosedaddy]

Try Mepis, it is a live distro that is easily installed onto the hardrive. It workes "out of the box" with my Broadcom card.

Any distro should work with broadcom cards using ndiswrapper from sourceforge.

[blu.gecko]

its a compaw presario 2210US and broadcom is the wireless, thanks for the info moosedaddy.

if only 80 gig drives were cheaper......

mandrake 9.1 and slackware 9.1 were both listed, I have heard slackware is a beast to install

[psych-major]

Originally posted by blu.gecko
mandrake 9.1 and slackware 9.1 were both listed, I have heard slackware is a beast to install

I've never had much luck with Mandrake, but that's just me, you can judge for yourself.

Slackware is not that hard to install, and once doen it is very robust and stable.

Mepis is an excellent choice for a live CD, as is knoppix.

[riscphree]

i tried ubuntu live, and it detected my broadcom onboard wireless just fine :)

[blu.gecko]

I like the layout of ubuntu but when I loaded the live cd I had to place the wireless icon in the system tray, and it said no wireless device detected. I have the live cd version 4.10 intel and x86 edition. I got it from the shippit section. mabye I am supposed to install a program to make it work or something I dunno.


me
:confused:

[mrBen]

Originally posted by blu.gecko
I like the layout of ubuntu but when I loaded the live cd I had to place the wireless icon in the system tray, and it said no wireless device detected. I have the live cd version 4.10 intel and x86 edition. I got it from the shippit section. mabye I am supposed to install a program to make it work or something I dunno.


me
:confused:

Just placing the wireless applet on the panel is unlikely to configure your network. You will need to go to the Networking configuration dialogue to do that - it's in Computer -> System Configuration -> Networking (or something like that.....)

[plonka2000]

Hi,

I just got a load of new Wireless kit too...
I'll be setting it up sometime today but if you would like any links to start looking, have a look at my thread here:
http://www.justlinux.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=138553

I've got loads of links to useful wireless sites for Linux. :)

Hope its useful to you.

[blu.gecko]

I ckecked out you jl post url, very usefull. I did a google on live linux and I am looking at 3 choices, slax, geexbox and adios linux, anyone hae any input on these?

[psych-major]

I have been having a lot of fun with Slax. My only issue with it is that I can't get the sound card on my Dell Latitude D800 to work with it. On every other PC I've tried it on it works great.

I especially like the Popcorn version, it has firefox, thunderbird, mplayer and xmms pre-installed and yet it's only 139 megs, allowing room for a number of optional modules and still have it fit on a mini 210 meg CD. That's just cool!!

You can also save and reload config stuff with a USB pen drive.

It automatically mounts any hard drives it finds, for playing mp3's or working with docs or whatever.

Anyway, sorry for the sermon, but I really like Slax. If you go that route and have questions, I can probably help you out, just thow out a post...

[plonka2000]

Just to let you all know, I've posted a (mostly) complete HOWTO in my thread linked above for setting up a Wifi card using 'ndiswrapper'.

Here is the link again:
http://www.justlinux.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=138553

I hope its of use to someone. :)

[blu.gecko]

plonka2000,

Please forgive me if I am incorrect but you are running gentoo and mandrake yes? but have you done this with the live eval version? I wish to keep my MS partition, for business use, and I only have a 40 gig drive, eventually I will have the cash to upgrade to a 80 gig or better drive so for now I am looking for a live distro that will pick up my wi-fi without having to install it on my laptop, I have read some material and I like the way the .deb file system works, ubuntu looks like a nice distro I just wish I could get the live version to work with my system.

Compaq Presario 2210US
Working with slax and Ubuntu LIVE 4:10

[timothykaine]

Knoppix and Mepis are both Debian based (*.deb) live distributions that have the ndiswrapper and wifi drivers precompiled into the disc.

Zen is a newer Debian-based distro that has wi-fi tools, but Im not sure what. Though the latest version of Zen supports installing programs from apt-get while running from the live CD, so if it doesnt have it, you can apt-get it while running live and not having to install to your HD.

[plonka2000]

Yeah, Debian based distros are a good choice... however, most live-cd distros give you the option to save your data to a USB key... Which is very nice. :cool:

Which ones exactly though, I wouldnt be able to tell you...

Blu, yes I use Mandrake... though less and less and less, and in fact 2 days ago I formatted my whole main PC because I thought I'd do a Gentoo/Ubuntu+XP dual-boot instead of Mandrake+XP (Sadly, I need XP for a lot of my work).

Mandrake is an excellent distrobution in my opinion abd I'd recommend it to anyone of all *nix/m$ experiences. Ubuntu would be my second choice but mandrake has always had excellent hardware detection.

Their 'Mandrake Move' distrobution is supposed to be really good at hardware detection too. I recommend you check it out here (http://www.mandrakesoft.com/products/move).

Sorry that I'm such a Mandrake fanboy, but they've never done me wrong. :) Gentoo on the other hand... :rolleyes:

Note: Further to that, you can download Mandrake Move from the official mirrors here (http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/ftp.php3).