G'day all,

I'm a relative newb to Linux and even newer newb to Ubuntu, so I'm needing a bit of help.

I've managed to install Ubuntu 12.10 onto my PPC G3 iBook and while it runs ok, it will never be a speed demon. The machine has 640 Mb of RAM and runs at 700 MHz so it will struggle a bit. I don't intend to use it for any high demand work, I have a quad core iMac running Lion for that sort of stuff, so generally, speed is not an issue.

It was only after I had it installed for a few days that I realised that 12.10 is still in alpha, go figure. For the most part, it runs really well, I've installed cairo-dock and a few other things so I'm finding my way around the OS ok.

As the subject line indicates, my issue is with the Airport card, common issue from what I read. The first time I booted up, the system recognised the card and the network but would not login. After some trying, I eventually grabbed the Belkin Surf & Share USB dongle I bought for my Puppy Linux install and plugged it in, voila, it connected straight up. So at least I have a working back up for when the Airport just won't work.

I tried all the suggested fixes and workarounds and none seem to work. When I installed wicd and deleted the network-manager (using sudo apt-get), as suggested in a couple of posts, I didn't have any wifi, not even with my Belkin. There wasn't even an interface I could use to configure the wifi. Fortunately, ethernet came to the rescue, I quickly removed wicd and reinstalled the default network-manager.

Having done that, I see that wicd is still installed and running as a start-up process. According to one how-to about this whole issue, there can only be one wifi manager running, how is my situation possible?

At the moment, I get wifi intermittently, at first it was for about a minute then drop out but lately it has been connecting permanently but not every start up. I'm finding that I have to restart a few times to get it to connect. Is this normal? If anyone has any suggestions as to where I can look to make it to work every time I boot up, I would appreciate that.

Also, I am looking for kernel modules that I can stop from loading at start up just to get a bit more speed out of it. As I said before, I'm not needing a lot of speed but anything to get just a little more would help it run a bit smoother. Where would I start looking?

Thanks for any help. Also, if I need to add any further info, please let me know, I'm only too happy to supply what I can, I just don't always know what is needed. Cheers all.