Ubuntu on a lappy

[lkokot@sonic.net]

I took Ubuntu for a spin on my Inspiron 8600 lappy and worked flawlessly except for the fact that it wouldn't play nice with either of my wireless ifc's, built in or pcmcia. Guess I cant consider it as replacement for Xandros after all. I don't see why it's possible for one distro to support hw and another distro to have such problems with it. It's all open source isn't it? And if it's NOT all open source then for crissakes find something that is and include it. Because I cannot support the free distros if they cannot prove themselves as truly able competitors with OS's that charge for the privilege.

I know I sound like an a@@hole, but, hell, Ubuntu is the most popular *free* distro and it's fair game for critisism. I am willing to pay for the privilege, yes, to have my hw work with my software. That's IMPORTANT! I dnt want to be tooling around too much for drivers, etc. But really that's not even the issue here.

Because, linux drivers for wireless suck! Yes, they do. They absolutely suck. And I can't wait for someone to find a few that work, because I have work to do and I need to connect to the internet and my primary means to do that is with wireless. sorry is this turned into a rant, i didn't mean it to be. I just meant to implore Ubuntu project to consider that many people go with a for pay distro like SLED or Xandros because the free distros do not work for them.

[3rdalbum]

I don't know exactly what wireless cards you have, but it's not "all open source". Ubuntu comes with a huge amount of built-in drivers, so for Xandros to have one that Ubuntu doesn't have must mean that the wireless cards only have proprietary drivers. These drivers are not included with Ubuntu, because they are impossible to support (not open-source).

If you'd like to have a wide range of closed-source drivers causing goodness knows what kind of confusion, then go ahead and use Xandros. They design their distro for those sorts of purposes. I personally wouldn't touch it with a 9-foot pole, but that's my decision, and you're free to make your own.

[lancest]

My ASUS W7J has Intel wireless that works out of the box. (by accident) I paid alot for this good Linux functioning laptop. However I installed Ubuntu on another laptop that had Atheros wireless using ndiswrapper and the setup was very tedious (so I gave up). Try again later. I recommend people stick to known Linux working hardware for ease of setup. This is why I believe with increasing demand preinstalled Linux laptops will be popular. Of course wireless support will improve also for 'do it yourself' setups

[lancest]

My ASUS W7J has Intel wireless that works out of the box. (by accident) I paid alot for this good Linux functioning laptop. However I installed Ubuntu on another laptop that had Atheros wireless using ndiswrapper and the setup was very tedious (so I gave up). Try again later. I recommend people stick to known Linux working hardware for ease of setup. This is why I believe with increasing demand preinstalled Linux laptops will be popular. Of course wireless support will improve also for 'do it yourself' setups

[wolfen69]

does windows xp come with drivers for everything? no. i recently reinstalled xp on a friends laptop, and had to find 9 drivers after install! including wireless. so why is ubuntu bad because it didnt have 1 driver? it includes alot more out of the box than windows ever will. did you even try ndiswrapper? probably not. your rant is pointless.

[lkokot@sonic.net]

My ASUS W7J has Intel wireless that works out of the box. (by accident) I paid alot for this good Linux functioning laptop. However I installed Ubuntu on another laptop that had Atheros wireless using ndiswrapper and the setup was very tedious (so I gave up). Try again later. I recommend people stick to known Linux working hardware for ease of setup. This is why I believe with increasing demand preinstalled Linux laptops will be popular. Of course wireless support will improve also for 'do it yourself' setups

OK, I also have a intel chip on mobo, can't recall model, but that has same problem as the atheros card: easy handshaking w/o WEP, on again, off again handshaking with WEP. It will connect one time, and not connect the next, randomly. I like Ubuntu because of the low overhead and the simplicity of the desktop. I may install it with a hard line inet connection if that's what it takes, but that means I have to go out and buy a modem. Well maybe I'll go that way, since other than wireless support, all the linux distros are great.

[rukur]

my lenovo 3000N100 works well
no problem with the wireless or network card
no problem with multimedia either

they were my problems when my lappy was running on suse :D