[Lincs] laptop os

[MD]

On 4/14/06, garry saddington <garry at schoolteachers.co.uk> wrote:
> On Fri, 2006-04-14 at 11:42 +0100, Alan Pope wrote:
> > On 14/04/06, iain Baker <iain.dbaker at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > hi guys,
> > > i have just ought a HP Pavilion dv5000 series Laptop with wireless
> > > networking... does anyone know a distro that has worked with this
> > > laptop and had the wireless card active?
> >
> I had a laptop for teachers machine which was a HP. Ubuntu/Edubuntu
> worked straight away. Best ones to try for an out of box working install
> in my experience.
> Regards
> Garry

I use ubuntu 5.10 on my laptop. Ubuntu will most likely work on
anything; its auto-config is excellent. I'm a bit of a console fan,
but with ubuntu, it is easy to get away without having to touch an
xterm at all.

Wifi with WEP will work out of the box with virtually no
configuration, but WPA-PSK is a little more tricky. I only got it
working with the SSID being broadcast; not a huge security hole, but I
would have preferred it to be obscured.

WPA support using the GUI is one thing I'm hoping they'll add to the
new release of ubuntu. The current GUI is rather irritating as it
keeps overwriting the config files whilst I'm in the middle of making
changes. For WPA-PSK you will need to venture into the console and do
some minor conf file hacking, specifically with wpasupplicant.

My only experience has been with the ipw2200 driver for the Intel PRO
wireless chip you get in most centrino laptops, but I suspect that HP
you have will probably use a Broadcom chip. You should be able to get
it working using ndiswrapper.

Best thing to do is make sure you can establish an unencrypted
connection first, and then move onto adding all the encryption and
security features.

If you google for an ubuntu WIFI or WPA HOWTO, you're bound to find
many helpful articles. Ubuntuforums.org has loads, but there are
plenty of other HOWTOs on other sites.

--
Thanks,
-Matt Dancer <barodato at gmail dot com>