Ubuntu Wireless Drivers

[Ian]

I've got Ubuntu working great from a USB stick in my PC now, after reading some of the articles from Abarbarian - and it's working great I very much doubt I'll be ditching Windows any time soon, but it's fun to play around with and good for troubleshooting.

The PC I'm using it on is connected to the network with a wireless adapter, which doesn't work out of the box with Ubuntu... however to my surprise, you can use existing Windows drivers for the card! Brilliant

The following article (although a few years old) sums it up well:

http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/46385/

 

[Taffycat]

Are you using it with your Vista PC, can I ask? I have to say that I've also found Abarbarian's experiences to be very interesting, and would love to dabble, if only I had the nerve ... oh and a bit more knowledge would probably be a help too

 

[Ian]

Yep, I installed it on a 2GB USB drive and boot from it on my Vista PC It doesn't change anything on the Vista drive at all as everything runs from the USB stick - great for playing with

You can always use Virtual PC to use Linux within Windows - I've done that before and it's really easy to do (plus impossible to have anything go wrong).

Here's the instructions I used for USB Ubuntu:

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/2008/04/09/usb-ubuntu-804-installation-from-windows/

 

[Taffycat]

Thank you for the info Ian, I have just bookmarked the page you linked-to, so that I can get back to it later on.

It's very encouraging when you say that it's "impossible to have anything go wrong," because as you'll know, my knowledge is pretty limited. I'm tempted to dig out one of the laptops and experiment on that first

 

[Ian]

The VPC way should mean it's impossible to go wrong, the USB bootable method is almost impossible to go wrong The only thing I can think of would be running the makeboot file on your hard drive, rather than the USB stick (which would mess up the Master Boot Record)... or if you loaded up the Linux file explorer and inexplicably formatted a hard drive! Both are very unlikely though

There's a tutorial here on the VPC method too :

http://arcanecode.wordpress.com/2008/04/24/installing-ubuntu-804-under-microsoft-virtual-pc-2007/

 

[Urmas]

OR... VirtualBox ( http://www.virtualbox.org/ ). I'm an addict.

Take a look at these tutorials... it's E-A-S-Y and F-U-N !

http://forums.scotsnewsletter.com/index.php?showtopic=19776

 

[Taffycat]

I can understand why folk become so interested in Linux (in it's various forms... er distros) this is all interesting stuff

To be on the safe side, I've a good mind to try it on my really old ME laptop, it would be impossible to mess anything up on that, because it has just been mothballed for the past few years (it just needs a CMOS battery replacement) So maybe it's time to put on the surgical gloves, put my "patient" onto the operating table and give it all a go

 

[Ian]

Sounds like a perfect plan TC

You could even install Vista (edit : I mean Linux ) on the hard drive over WinME, as the performance would be better than a live CD/USB stick. Would be good fun to play with

 

[Taffycat]

I think Vista would be a tad ambitious, because that particular laptop was our first, (circa 2001) and it's very low spec. It only has 20 GB HD and 250 Mb of RAM (if memory serves. It was put aside when we replaced it with our higher spec XP laptops.) It should be okay for Linux though (...whether I am, is another matter, of course )

 

[Ian]

Oh, sorry - I don't know why I said Vista - I meant Linux

 

[Urmas]

Edit

250 Mb of RAM

Oops... that's gonna be a problematic with the live/install CDs of "full blown" distros such as Ubuntu, PCLos etc. A Ubuntu "live session" (=booting from CD) requires OVER 256 megs. Installing won't be a problem, though... you simply download and burn the "Alternate Install" disk. It's an "install only" disk good for... er... vintage hardware.



OR: go Xubuntu:

To run the Desktop CD (LiveCD + Install CD), you need 128 MB RAM to run or 192 MB RAM to install. The Alternate Install CD only requires you to have 64 MB RAM. To install Xubuntu, you need 1.5 GB of free space on your hard disk.

Once installed, Xubuntu can run with 192 MB RAM, but it is strongly recommended to have at least 256 MB RAM.

http://www.xubuntu.org/get