[Discuss] My first laptop...bummer

[Corey Burger]

On Jan 6, 2008 9:53 PM, David Lee <misterlee at shaw.ca> wrote:
> Good evenin'
>
> I just bought my first laptop. It's a Toshiba with an Atheros 5007(G?) wire less adapter. I bought it 'cause the Atheros website said it was a big fan of Linux etc, etc.
> Well. Long story short..no wireless networking. First I had Vista off. Installed 7 or 8 distros but nothing "just worked". I've never had any problems with my 3 desktops and networking (wired).
> I put on Ubuntu, the sound works, I've got proper screen resolution and other than no wireless, I could like it. I put Vista back on and dual boot with Ubuntu, switching to Vista for mobility.
> I tried to use ndiswrapper, but the .inf files are stuff like oem.17 and the like. My limited knowledge leaves something to be desired.
> This laptop has a card slot , so I wondered if I bought an inexpensive wireless card from Futureshop (Christmas gift cards), that I might have better luck getting my wireless network going. I did buy a D-link wireless router that seem to work fine.
>
> The whole idea of a laptop was so I could have my own Linux machine. My wife gets real annoyed when I accidently format her Windows partitions. :)

Atheros is a friend of Linux, if "friend" means evil-binary blobs.
However, with the new ath5k driver, help is on the way, not that
Atheros is helping with it. Expect to see that in the Fedora 10/Ubuntu
8.10 lifetime. As for getting a PCMCIA wireless card, do your homework
and if the OEMs have played silly bugger with the chipsets as they are
wont to do, return it saying was defective.

Corey