[NTLUG:Discuss] My Linux journey with a new laptop, still have problems (be warned, long post)

[Wayne Dahl]

Hi all,

It's been a while since I've posted a question to you guys.  So far,
I've been able to find answers to most of my questions online or in the
man pages/help files.

I'm at an impasse at this point, however.  A couple of weeks ago, I
purchased a couple of laptops for the wife and I, hers a Toshiba, mine
an HP.  Both came loaded with (shudder) Vista and both have had
problems, specifically with random shutdowns for no apparent reason. 
The whole platform just shuts down hard.  Apparently, this is a known
*VISTA* problem as I came across a couple of forums discussing this
issue on Toshiba and HP laptops.  I would think it probably isn't
limited to just those brands, but that's all that was discussed. 

I told the wife when I bought hers that she should try Vista for a
while, see if she liked it or not and, if not, then I'd wipe hers and
we'd install XP on it instead (which is much more stable for the
platform ((so far, I have been unable to convince her to dump Mickey$oft
altogether))). 

>From the start, I'd decided I was going in install Linux on mine.  I
decided to start using it as a dual boot, see how long it was before I
booted back into Vista (if ever) and then decide on whether or not to
wipe the whole thing to recover the drive space and just have Linux
loaded by itself.  So far, so good.

I had some trouble getting a Kubuntu 7.10 LiveCD to work as it wouldn't
recognize the video card and would dump me to a command line.  It would
not start X.  I tried a PCLinuxOS LiveCD and it looked like it was going
to boot up only to die at a point where it APPEARED it failed to
recognize the CD/DVD drive.  I tried a Fedora Core 8 KDELive CD and it
did boot up to the GUI with KDE, although in 800X600 mode.  So I knew at
that point that it was theoretically possible to get it to work just fine.

I couldn't figure out why Fedora Core 8 could boot to the video card but
Kubuntu couldn't.  After all, (K)Ubuntu is SUPPOSED to have some of the
best hardware recognition of any of the distros.  So I popped the Live
DVD back in and when it got to the boot screen, the second option
(which, in my stupidity, I hadn't tried before) was to boot into safe
graphical mode.  Voila, it booted to KDE again in 800X600 mode.  So I
had video and the sound worked out of the box.  It was able to see the
wired ethernet NIC and I was able to configure it.  While it could SEE
the wireless NIC, I could never enable it.  No surprises there.  I also
could not set screen resolution any higher, which also was not
surprising as Kubuntu didn't recognize the video gpu.

Here's the stats on the machine, so you know where I headed with this....

HP Pavilion Entertainment PC, model DV9260US
AMD Turion 64 X2 Dual Core Mobile Technology TL-58
2 120 Gig SATA 5400 rpm HD's
2 Gigs DDR2 2 Dimm RAM
nVidia MCP67M gpu, 256 Mb of dedicated video memory, capable of using
559 Mb of RAM total.  (Vista listed the GPU as nVidia MCP67M, HP in
their specs says it's an nVidia GeForce Go 7150M (UMA), which is, I'm
sure, the same thing).
HP Pavilion Webcam with Integrated Mic
Broadcom 802.11 b/g wireless NIC

After a few false starts with the video, (I'd tried just loading
different drivers in the Add/Remove Packages package manager, which was
a big mistake), I decided to just use the restricted drivers found under
System Settings ---> Advanced ---> Restricted Drivers.  There were just
two, one for the video and one for the Broadcom wireless NIC.  I
selected both, rebooted and while the wireless NIC indicator light on
the front of the laptop was blue (it's normal enabled color), the video
again came up in 800x600 resolution mode.  I figured it was a matter of
just adding the desired screen resolution (Vista had it come up natively
in 1440x900 mode), I edited /etc/X11/xorg.conf to add the desired screen
resolution, rebooted (I'm a little fuzzy on the process of stopping and
starting the X server) and I now had the maximum screen resolution this
laptop will produce.  The screen is capable of 720p HD screen
resolution, low end HD, to be sure, but it beats standard screen
resolutions.

The sound worked, so I started downloading the apps I wanted on the
laptop and started configuring things like desktop wallpapers, themes,
etc.  I tried using KNetworkManager to configure the wireless NIC to no
avail.  It would never see ANY wireless LANs around (and I've seen at
least 6 available from inside my house).  I tried KWiFiManager, same
results.  I gave up after diddling with it for a couple of days trying
different things to get it to work and downloaded the Mickey$oft
Broadcom driver and installed it with ndiswrapper.  Still, those WiFi
tools didn't see any available networks.  So I set that aside to try
again later.

I've got this running KDE and wanted to be able to show off other window
managers to the people I work with, so I installed Enlightenment and
Gnome.  In the process of installing those, several network/wireless
apps showed up that I didn't have before, notably WiFi Radar.  I have to
say that it's one of the EASIEST to configure and from the start, it was
able to see both MY wireless router and up to 5 other wireless
networks.  However, while it's able to see them, I still can't seem to
connect to my wireless router.  Here's my wireless info...

Netgear WGT-624 v2 wireless router configured as a wireless access
point, since I have a Smoothwall hardware firewall on the network.
WPA password
Static network IP's on all machines in the house (there are 6 computers
on the network), this one being 192.168.1.105
Network name is OURPETS

I believe the problem is in my WPA password, which works fine with
Windows.  It's 21 characters long.  Using WiFi Radar, I used that WPA
password as the encryption key, but still don't know what to use for a
WPA driver.  Checking the forums, I found that if you're using
ndiswrapper for the driver, normally you would use wext as the WPA
driver.  I tried that, it seemed to connect once to the wireless router,
but I was never connected anywhere else (not able to get to the outside
world) and after I disconnected, it never connected to OURPETS again.

Any ideas where to head with it now?

I was actually able to get the built-in webcam working, both locally and
via Kopete.  I was surprised it was actually as easy to get working as
it was, with all the horror stories I've heard about webcam support in
Linux (even though there is a concerted effort to get as many working as
possible).

The other piece I still have to configure is the Sprint Wireless
Broadband account we have.  I've got it set up and working with Windoze
(so the account is already activated, after having to spend an hour on
the phone going through 3 levels of tech support to do so), but I
haven't got it set up for Linux yet.  Sprint has instructions on their
website for configuring the modem for Kubuntu 6.10, so I don't know what
gotchas I'm going to encounter while configuring it.  The Sprint modem
is a Novatel Ovation USB model.  Anybody tried setting one of those up?

I haven't tried using the remote control that came with it and stores in
the Expresscard 34/54 slot, but will give that a shot later.

Sorry for the length of the post, but thought some of you might be
interested in my laptop Linux journey so far.  I still consider myself a
relative n00b and am kinda proud of how far I've been able to come so
far.  However, I'm banging my head against the wall with this wireless
NIC issue (which I KNOW has been a problem for a lot of people).  So,
any ideas you can give would be greatly appreciated.

To those of you who have yet to attempt installing Linux on a laptop,
take heart.  If *I* can do it, ANYONE can do it.  And keep in mind, this
was with a completely untested, unknown compatibility laptop (HP seems
to have done a very good job of making this one very Linux compatible). 
So after I get it all working, I'll have to add it to the laptop
compatibility list.

Thanks guys...you are simply the best.

Wayne