12.04 up - video required

[squakie]

I'd love to have lubuntu or other working - but with the problem I had with 12.04 (used the alternate image) crashing whenever I tried a rmmod from terminal, I'd rather keep things as-is until the memory arrives (not to mention a new A/C adapter - the current one gets VERY hot and appears to be underrated for the laptop). Once all those things are in place I'll try all of that. It's just something to mess around on using Linux, so at the current time at least it's not critical to get this all working quickly. My 4306 is rev 2 so I just used the firmware cutter and the .o file to extract the firmware it needed - it's been working since I first did that with 11.04. Thanks for the help everyone!

[DuckHook]

...I don't know how well older systems run with the newer unity versions, aka 12.10, or 13.04(beta).

Gawdawful. Unity is not tender with the fond memories of yesteryear.

[DuckHook]

Hi squakie. Trust you are keeping well.

From an old-equipment mutt: would highly recommend that you give CrunchBang or Bodhi a go. I've been especially impressed with Bodhi. Love the Enlightenment desktop. CrunchBang easily grows on you too, especially if you like an aesthetic that is Spartan to the point of minimalist. You will have to stick with the 32-bit non-PAE kernels in both cases, but you will feel right at home. From apt-get to using the Ubuntu repos, they are familiar to work with and yet work like greased lightning especially on old HW.

[squakie]

hi duckhook! hope things are going good for you. Well, just for the heck of it used the 12.04 alternate image and was able to install this time and get my wireless working, but as myself, you, and others suspected, can you say I've seen snails faster than that? I know the bump up in memory will help some, but unity (I assume it has to be the 2d) is running I suspect I might have slightly better luck with a non-unity desktop. Going to try that later. In the meantime, I think I'll try CrunchBag as I have heard it often but never tried it. I did have bohdi running in a vm for a while but it's been gone for while. Nothing can be any worse than installing Slackware back in 1995, so if I just start using the ol' noggin again I would get along better!

[DuckHook]

...unity (I assume it has to be the 2d) is running I suspect I might have slightly better luck with a non-unity desktop.

The problem is the crud that the actual Ubuntu flavour drags in because it is configured to be able to launch Unity at any time. You don't need the kernel modules, the services and the suboptimal configs for Unity, and this is the advantage of starting with a non-Unity install. But I also know the frustration of wrestling with dead WIFI, so you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. BTW, you may have to wrestle alligators to get your 4306 working. If rev 02, it's b43legacy. If rev 03 or higher, it's b43. Check rev by doing:

lspci -vvnn | grep 14e4

Either version, they drop their connection both regularly and frequently, especially in the middle of long downloads, and are a royal pain in the neck. Are you stuck with this wonky chip or can you use something less ancient? Changing that one component might open up all your options.

I dual boot CrunchBang and Bodhi on an old Dell laptop with a Pentium M processor and 512 MB (and the exact 4306 chip you are wrestling with). It runs both OSes flawlessly and fast. I even get compositing on Bodhi, but the GPU is reasonable, so your mileage may vary. At any rate, I had to install b43legacy by hand, but both OSes come with up-to-date fwcutter so no insurmountable problems. Did you download your blob from openwrt.org or elsewhere? I can't get mine to work unless its the openwrt.org version:

For b43legacy, it's http://downloads.openwrt.org/sources...a-3.130.20.0.o
For b43, it's http://mirror2.openwrt.org/sources/b...mipsel.tar.bz2

Nothing can be any worse than installing Slackware back in 1995...

I tried Gentoo when it was first released, ohh, 10 years ago? I still shudder at the memories. Your experience probably trumps mine.

[squakie]

Well, I installed crunchbang, but am a little stuck. My 4306 - it's rev 2 - says firmware missing as per Ubuntu. But I can't find anything on the installation CD that looks like the firmware cutter. I've tried rmmod'ing all of the b43 things - b43legacy, ssb, etc. - then modprobe'ing them, but the same result. The post-installation script is just hung there because it wants an internet connection. I don't want to kill it until I know how to re-run it once I get my wireless working. It's kind of funny - the 4306 worked with no drops in Ubuntu 11.04 using the firmware cutter and the .o file - but when I installed 12.04 then used the same I started having drop outs. I suspect a change in the kernel itself. At any rate - just stuck here. Looked on the net and can't find anything that tells you how to do an off-line installation of the firmware.

[squakie]

Got it! Got the firmware cutter working, copied in the .o file containing the various firmware and ran firmware cutter -all's good, post installation script is running. btw - so far seems pretty quick, and memory usage is unreal!

[DuckHook]

Glad to see you worked it out. I had to cut out on you last night to get my beauty sleep so didn't see your post about running into a spot of trouble until this morning.

On my box, Bodhi is even tinier than CrunchBang. These were the only two Ubuntu-based distros that treated obsolete equipment with real respect. Lubuntu is also fine, but occupies over 50% more memory than CrunchBang on my 512 MB box. Wait till you have IceWeasel, Abiword and Gnumeric all up and running and still have 200MB of memory free. It's a pleasure to go back to efficient computing again.

[squakie]

And I see what you mean about the wireless - even though it's a b/g adapter it's only running 11mb at most. The rest of the network is N, so this really drags things down. Guess it's time to head down to Micro Center and pick up one ofthe $10 Tenda N USB adapter - it worked out of the box with Ubuntu so hopefully the same.

[DuckHook]

+1

wait till it drops your connection in the middle of a critical upgrade. The $10 will have been well worth it.