Knoppx is outtie
Okay, so I decided to give Knoppx a try as the next contestant in ‘name that distro’ – the live CD game that you to can play if you have a crappy laptop with a neurotic wifi card. Seriously, I had heard only good things about the grandfather of all Live CD distros and thought that if anyone could pick up my broadcom 4318, Knoppix would be the one! So here is how it went.
The intro immediately informs me to make sure that I am going to boot from Knoppix, if I don’t want to then now is my chance to take the disk out. I like that. Fair warning for those who forgot that the disk was still in the drive next time they boot up.
· Little penguin is fat, happy, and in the upper left corner waiting
· There is a black screen while it is checking the systems, then goes to the more graphic desktop of a traffic scene seen from a speeding car. I find this odd and does not connect to the rest of the theme of Knoppix, but I am a designer, maybe it is just me.
· First problem is it tells me my battery life is low, this I know to be false, so I know that things might not go as smoothly as planned.
· Window opens for my Knoppix info through a browser but surprise surprise no internet connection. At least with Mepis it tried to find the connection, this time Knoppix didn’t even register that I had the card.
· So onto fining NDIS wrapper …not a problem for the next step since I already have the drivers in question on my mini hard drive.
******ROAD BLOCK*********
· Great, my mini hard drive won’t mount. Not sure if it is a hardware or software problem but the game is over. With no drivers I have no next step.
· Decide to look at the rest of the shinnies
· Besides the wifi card issue noticed a couple of interesting features like
o Penguin icon over system and program menu, this is nice since it brings you right to the INDS wrapper configuration …something I seem to be constantly looking for
o Open Office icon on the screen, I like this since it is such a common application
o 2 web browsers of Konquerer and Firefox
o Terminal window icon, nice to not have to go searching for it
o Childrens games – this is a first for me, I have never seen a children’s game option, I found it thoughtful and I loved Mr. Potato Guy
o Toys – I love shinnies like this…it has a tea timer and googly eyes…what more could a penguin girl need
So how sad that the oldest of all the Live CDs has failed me. I know that a lot of you …Mandeep included…are asking me to stop my crazy Newfie ways and admit that I need new hardware and move on….Alas I will not sway from my original project…I want a Linux distro that is compatible with my Acer and my wifi…..I will keep trying until I find one…In the meantime I will simply enjoy the fun of a new distro and the new shinnies available on each….So lets see …who’s next….Fedora?
September 17th, 2006 at 4:21 pm
Wha?? When did I suggest getting new hardware? I think someone is confusing me with Jza.
September 28th, 2006 at 4:53 am
Did you ever get my email about how to get Ubuntu to work with your wireless card? I sent it about 3 weeks ago.
I know that you don’t want to revist old distro’s and you have your own journey, but it drives me crazy to hear you missing your wireless, distro after distro.
I’m not going to try to sway your opinion on what distro to use. Just try this out to see if you can get your wireless working on a linux platform. I think you should be able to get this to work through the liveCD, but you will need to plug in the laptop to the Internet through ethernet to download the firmware for your card.
From: J & K
Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2006 11:11:07
To:jeff.rasmussen at gmail.com
Subject: Re: Show #20
Damnit…I wish we had this info three weeks ago
Glad you like the show!
J
- Hide quoted text -
Jeff Rasmussen wrote:
> Quick response to show #20 and Ubuntu broadcom wireless.
>
> I spent 2 hours trying to get it to work, but the answer was a 5 minute fix, but I never got ndiswrapper to work.
>
> The Broadcom driver works like a charm but Ubuntu couldn’t distribute the firmware necessary. You can use a script located at /usr/share/doc/$broadcom folder/$script folder/$script to download the firmware.
>
> Here are my notes:
>
> http://jeffrasmussen.wordpress.com/2006/05/26/ubuntu-wireless
>
> New fan, hooked on the first show
September 28th, 2006 at 5:12 am
Linux on a laptop can be frustrating (or an adventure ).
Many lappy’s (and desktops) have faulty/nonstandard ACAPI’s , lets face it theese things were built to run windows. This can be corrected but requires a hack, that may explain the miniHD issue and the battery reading.
The WIFI problem is kind of universal with linux ,again the hardware was designed for windows. With any distro try different dotversions of ndiswrapper in combination with different drivers . The driver dosen’t have to be from Acer try several that are reported to work with your card. On my HP/AMD64 laptop with SuSe10.0 I ended up with a self compiled CVS ndiswrapper and an Acer 64 bit broadcom driver , once working though it works like a charm.(it does have to be re modprobed and setup after a kernal update).
I haven’t read the whole blog so I don’t know if you have tried Puppy yet but once you do find a working combination of ndis and driver puppy can be remastered as a multi session live cd/dvd which would eliminate the need for the miniHD .
Again with any distro you will have to play around a bit ( or a lot) to get everything working, but have faith it can be done . Until hardware manufacture’s star taking linux seriously a works “out of the box first time” solution isn’t here yet.
September 28th, 2006 at 2:22 pm
Jeff, thanks for your patience. I must admit I don’t remember the email, but things are crazy for me right now and I don’t have the time to play with any new distros at the moment. I was afraid this would happen.
However, I would love to get Ubuntu working again, I will definately investigate the possiblities through your link when I am not so swamped with school!
KPG
September 28th, 2006 at 2:27 pm
Ronac, Thanks for the advice with the drivers. The thing is that I have tried different variations with my last two distros and nada! Even the ones that many others have reported to be working with my card. You are right, linux and the laptop are a hit and miss sort of couple.
I will try puppy though, I havent heard about it prior to this so my interest is perked “hence the raised eyebrow.” And I am glad that your SuSe is working so well, the problem is not only my getto laptop ( It really did fall off the back of a large white van), it is the broadcom as well, I will keep trying though.
KPG
October 8th, 2006 at 1:58 am
Hi KPG
I was just reading a review of Xandros Desktop Home Edition Premium version 4.0, and it got me thinking about you.
The reason for that is the following couple of sentences:
“Hardware recognition is where Xandros 4 really shines. All my hardware was autodetected and configured, including my Ati video card and my Broadcom 43xx wireless chipset! This is the first Linux distribution to properly install and configure my BCM43xx chipset out of the box.”
Yes, you read that correctly. Xandros got the guy’s Broadcom wireless working without any tweaking, configuring or pain. It just worked. I know that your Broadcom wireless is a bit of a holy grail to you, so I thought I’d better let you know.
However, I’ll also warn you that Xandros may not be the perfect linux for you (although, I’ll repeat “Broadcom just works!!!”) because:
1. It is not a live CD. I know your holiday is over and you have lots of studying to do, so you’re in live CD mode. And Xandros is not a live CD. But it is very easy to install. You might want to make a note for the future when your live CD phase is over.
2. Xandros is not free as in beer. And I know how much you like beer. Especially free beer. But it does come with a lot of commercial stuff that linux doesn’t normally come with, including proprietry drivers that make Broadcom wireless just work.
3. Xandros requires activation, just like Windows. I don’t like that. It just doesn’t sound like linux. But then again, neither does Broadcom wireless working out of the box.
4. I personally haven’t tried installing Xandros 4. In particular, I haven’t tried installing it on a computer with a Broadcom chipset. And even more particular, I haven’t tried installing it on YOUR laptop with a Broadcom chipset. So I can’t absolutely guarantee it will work for you if you try it. But it did work for the guy doing the review.
If you’re interested, the review is at
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=16082
Hope this (too long) post is helpful to you. And I’m sorry that it doesn’t say anything about Knoppix or your blog. But I couldn’t think of anywhere better to write it.
Adrian
PS Say hello to Mr KPG.