[Discuss] My first laptop...bummer

[Deryk Barker]

David Lee wrote:
> Hi John
>
> I've tried NM and I found the windows .inf files online. Ubuntu 
> recognizes it, lspci finds it, but iwconfig says no wireless.
> The annoying part of all this, is the fact that wherever I go, Ubuntu 
> forums or wherever, everybody seems to have problems. Some of these 
> people look like pretty bright people, so what chance do regular new 
> users have? Are there any that work with no problems? Is it because 
> laptops change that fast that hardware can't keep up? 
Quite probably. My new HP laptop at work has the broadcom 43xx wireless 
chipset, which was supported 'out of the box' on my older Averatec 
laptop when I installed (k)ubuntu 7.04 this summer.

But the linux driver failed to recognise the firmware rev of the newer 
version of the same chipset on the HP and I had to use ndiswrapper 
(which works well and was quite easy to get working - following online 
instructions).

BTW I had to try numerous linux distros before I could even install on 
this new laptop: all of the debian-derived installs (including ubuntu, 
mint et. al.) failed because - as I discovered - they erroneously load 
the PATA driver for the optical drive when it is natively SATA.

Although I could have configured 'legacy mode' in the BIOS, this always 
seems like cheating, and eventually I found a distro which would install 
- sidux, a 'stabilised' version of debian unstable (I know). (BTW I 
didn't even consider anything base on rpms)

Not necessarily for the faint of heart - and definitely not for the tyro 
- but as a way of minimising the bleeding in bleeding-edge, I heartily 
recommend it.