mandriva kde on inspiron 8200 [network question]

Question

hi there, thats my first post, hello to everyone. l have an dell i8200 and plan to install mandriva kde and use it as my primary OS. the thing is that l have a small wireless home network shared between 2 PC's and one dell laptop running xp pro for now so l want to run linux on the dell machine. want to know how, is there a special driver for the pci wireless for linux and dell laptops out there somewhere, it be my 1st time running linux, so l accept suggestions on which linux to work on for the first time. thanks in advance ps. one more thing, do l need all other drivers {MB,VGA, sound etc.) for linux as well

floba · Answer

Hello kentpaul!

Trying Linux is a good idea! You won't be disappointed.

As to your question concerning which distribution to use: in general Mandriva is a good choice, but so are Mint, Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS, openSUSE (just to name a few - very few indeed!). Maybe you should have a look at "http://distrowatch.com/" - there you can find lots of useful reviews and links to all the major and minor distributions.

In fact, the most distributions provide a LiveCD which allows you to safely boot the system from CD (as the name already suggests :-) ) without even affecting your HDD! This way, you can test whether/to what degree your hardware is supported.

You might be pleased to hear that most of the distributions have good hardware detection and already include most of the necessary drivers!!! (What a difference to a pure Windows-install!). Most of the time installing a needed driver afterwards isn't problematic either thanks to distro-specific Internet-repositories (and programs such as apt, synaptic, yum, rpmdrake etc.).

So don't be afraid to download the distribution of your choice, try the LiveCD, and if you encounter problems there is still the option to choose a different distro before installing to your HDD. Furthermore, there are always kind people on the forums when in need of help.

floba

floba · Answer

I almost forgot: Have a look at 'http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/dell.html' (middle of the page)... floba

kentpaul · Answer

Thanks for the friendly input!! Will post as soon as l install the linux, ofcourse if problem occures, hope there wont be any. Thanks again. Appreciated. :)

kentpaul · Answer

lt seems there's a problem. just downloaded mandriva one live 2007 loaded the live cd and run it onto my laptop, graphical interface appears and everything else's ok but the internet connection, wifi for example cannot be found in auto mode, need to configured which l cannot do myself, reverting back to xp everythings fine. help will be welcome :)

ByCo · Answer

Give SipmlyMEPIS 6.5 a try, from my experience it has the best automatic hardware detection and configuration, especially for wireless. The live cd ISO can be downloaded from mepis.org.

floba · Answer

Could you name the exact type of ethernet- and/or wifi-card that's in your system? Without it there is no way to solve the problem...

What about the reviews at "http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/dell.html"? Did anybody state similar problems with the same system? Maybe there is even a solution offered?

floba

Message Edited by floba on 08-05-2007 12:54 PM

kentpaul · Answer

hi, here's the specs : PCMCIA Dell Integrated Wireless 802.11b that's the base wireless card that comes with the laptop directly from dell store. @floba - looked through the link you posted! Thanks a lot. there's a certain solutions for the problem with wifi wireless cards mentioned for inspiron 8100 which should do for 8200 too, but they seems to be for fedora and ubuntu linux distributions. Since l am not very competent about linux l cannot help myself without an assistance. there's a command line which should be typed somewhere according to tha author and then wireless card will work !?! :) something about kernel is mentioned as well, sorry if sounds stupid or funny :( here's the thing l copy pasted from the page l gave me Wireless From ATrpms.net installed ipw3945, which seems to use the ieee80211 module from the kernel. The module loading options need to be added to /etc/modprobe.conf: install ipw3945 /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install ipw3945 ; sleep 0.5 ; /sbin/ipw3945d --quiet remove ipw3945 /sbin/ipw3945d --kill ; /sbin/modprobe -r --ignore-remove ipw3945 The remaining problem is that the ipw3945 module is not loaded according to these instructions on boot, so I added /sbin/modprobe -r ipw3945; sleep 0.5; /sbin/modprobe ipw3945 to /etc/rc.local to get wireless working. Of course eth0 needs to be shut down too, but I'm not used to how NetworkManager it taking over these operations. The file ifcfg-eth1 was generated by system-config-network and then hand edited. Big thanks in advance. ps. still very interested in knowing and understanding linux, probably wont be a bad idea to go through some e-books first!...hmm

diyana_ali · Answer

Hi KentPaul,   The wireless card that you are using is actually Intel Wireless 2100 (B only). You can verify this by doing:   $ /sbin/lspci | grep -i wireless   The driver that you're trying to install is actually for Intel Wireless A/B/G (ipw3945).   What you should do is installing the ipw2100 or ipw2200. Try downloading it: http://rpmfind.net/linux/rpm2html/search.php?query=ipw2100&submit=Search+...&system=mandriva&arch=    and install it using the usual # rpm -iVh command.   Try that and see if it's detected.

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mandriva kde on inspiron 8200 [network question]

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