March Departs and so does Vista
Before abandoning Vista completely I decided to do a memory upgrade on my Toshiba laptop from 1GB to 2GB. Memory for this machine is pretty cheap right now and I had a few dollars left in my budget for entertainment. Replacing the memory chips was surprisingly easy. I did put on my reading glasses to see the tiny screws on the case. There was some improvement in performance but the machine was still far below my expectations. The next improvement would be to install Vista Service Pack 1. The installation went smoothly but took over an hour during which time the machine rebooted a number of times. Again a slight performance increase but not really impressive. The machine will now boot to a usable state fairly quickly but the start-up disk access continues for 5 minutes or more! What in the world is the OS doing for so long??? Indexing???
Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) had progressed from alpha versions to an installable beta version with a release scheduled for April 24. I had previously installed 7.04 (using wubi). That installation had several problems including sound, screen resolution, and wireless connectivity. The sound and screen resolution were fixable, the wireless was not. The system crashed when I tried to do a distro upgrade, and was removed. Hardy now warns you that distro upgrades cannot be done from a wubi installation. Anyway, I decided I would once again try wubi for a temporary installation. If I could work out the problems I would remove the installation when the official release came out in April and make a permanent install at that time.
Hardy installed in about 20 minutes without a hitch. Unlike 7.04 sound worked perfectly and so did screen resolution. I thought the abstract Heron background was ugly and hit a couple of bugs when I attempted to change it. No big deal, but this is a beta! Wireless remains a problem. Some research found that the Atheros chipset had drivers specifically designed for Vista. Neither NDISwrapper nor madwifi would support them although both organizations said they were working on corrections.
Until they do, the only solution would be to use a USB wireless adapter and NDISwrapper. A nice thing about my laptop is that it has 4 USB 2.0 ports. One always has a wireless mouse plugged in, another my printer, another my external drive.... it gets to look like a hospital patient, but it works. Yes, if I could a cheap and hopefully temporary USB adapter to work, the wifi problem would be solved. I found some cautions on the internet. NDISwrapper was fairly simply to install. The challenge would be in getting the drivers
With very few dollars left in my budget I charged off to Circuit City. Several suitable devices from Netgear, D-Link and Belkin were available. All listed Windows as a system requirement. I opted for Netgear, I have a Netgear router that I am pleased with and the gadget was on sale. Upon arriving back home and examining the Windows install disk it had only a single file on it.... setup.exe. It took some work, and I am sad to say I had to use a Windows utility, but I did manage to extract the Windows driver. Following that NDISwrapper installed the driver and now I have wireless on Hardy.
This almost ends my story, but not quite. I'm a little irritated with Netgear in that it is so difficult to get the drivers. Wouldn't it be nice if they had a spot on their website for Linux people?? After all, the gadget does work and would generate some extra sales for them. I went to their website and attempted an email contact. It does not work. You get caught in an endless loop.
Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) had progressed from alpha versions to an installable beta version with a release scheduled for April 24. I had previously installed 7.04 (using wubi). That installation had several problems including sound, screen resolution, and wireless connectivity. The sound and screen resolution were fixable, the wireless was not. The system crashed when I tried to do a distro upgrade, and was removed. Hardy now warns you that distro upgrades cannot be done from a wubi installation. Anyway, I decided I would once again try wubi for a temporary installation. If I could work out the problems I would remove the installation when the official release came out in April and make a permanent install at that time.
Hardy installed in about 20 minutes without a hitch. Unlike 7.04 sound worked perfectly and so did screen resolution. I thought the abstract Heron background was ugly and hit a couple of bugs when I attempted to change it. No big deal, but this is a beta! Wireless remains a problem. Some research found that the Atheros chipset had drivers specifically designed for Vista. Neither NDISwrapper nor madwifi would support them although both organizations said they were working on corrections.
Until they do, the only solution would be to use a USB wireless adapter and NDISwrapper. A nice thing about my laptop is that it has 4 USB 2.0 ports. One always has a wireless mouse plugged in, another my printer, another my external drive.... it gets to look like a hospital patient, but it works. Yes, if I could a cheap and hopefully temporary USB adapter to work, the wifi problem would be solved. I found some cautions on the internet. NDISwrapper was fairly simply to install. The challenge would be in getting the drivers
With very few dollars left in my budget I charged off to Circuit City. Several suitable devices from Netgear, D-Link and Belkin were available. All listed Windows as a system requirement. I opted for Netgear, I have a Netgear router that I am pleased with and the gadget was on sale. Upon arriving back home and examining the Windows install disk it had only a single file on it.... setup.exe. It took some work, and I am sad to say I had to use a Windows utility, but I did manage to extract the Windows driver. Following that NDISwrapper installed the driver and now I have wireless on Hardy.
This almost ends my story, but not quite. I'm a little irritated with Netgear in that it is so difficult to get the drivers. Wouldn't it be nice if they had a spot on their website for Linux people?? After all, the gadget does work and would generate some extra sales for them. I went to their website and attempted an email contact. It does not work. You get caught in an endless loop.
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