I often find myself in need of more screen space when I'm using my computer. I have so many different things up on my screen at all times. Since Linux is my default operating system, I take advantage of the virtual desktop functionality that is built into most every popular window manager to make it seem like I have more screen space.

This is all fine and dandy, but it makes using Windows all the more frustrating to me. I've tried some utilities in the past that offered virtual desktop capabilities, but they always seemed weak and crashed a lot. For years I had given up on virtual desktops in Windows.

Today I decided to look into the current options for such functionality in Windows. In my searching, I came across Dexpot. I installed it, and it seems to be doing exactly what I want and more! It seems to be stable, and it only takes up 8,776K of my memory. That part could be better, but I'm not complaining :)

Anyway, I thought some of you might benefit from this utility as well.

Being the Django and Python zealot that I am, I often find myself trying to convert those around me to this awesome development paradigm. Once I break them, these people often ask me a lot of questions about Django. Over the past few months I've noticed that one of the biggest sticking points for people who are new to Django is actually getting it up and running to begin with. In response, this is the first in a series of articles dedicated to getting Django up and running.

export PYTHONPATH=/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages:$PYTHONPATH

source ~/.bash_rc

python -c "from distutils.sysconfig import get_python_lib; print get_python_lib()"

sudo ln -s /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/site-packages/django/bin/django-admin.py /usr/local/bin

sudo ln -s /usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/django/bin/django-admin.py /usr/local/bin

mkdir ~/bin

export PATH=$HOME/bin:$PATH

source ~/.bash_rc

Ok, ok... I decided to give openSUSE 11.0 another shot. Since my last blog post, I have read some reviews posted by some other people who encountered similar problems when attempting to actually use KDE4. Some of these people opted to install the KDE 3.5.9 remix after that and had more promising result. So, instead of letting my bias get the best of me, I am going to try openSUSE 11.0 one more time using KDE3. The following are the steps I took while going through this process:

1. Booted from DVD (openSUSE 11.0 x86_64)

2. Chose "Installation" from the boot menu

3. After the installer is completely loaded, I selected "English (US)" for both the language and the keyboard layout, read the license agreement, checked the "I Agree to the License Terms" box, and clicked Next.

4. I waited for a few seconds while the installer probed my hardware and updated some package lists, then I chose "New Installation" and clicked Next.

5. The next step was to choose my timezone. They have a very simple interface for this--much less frustrating than the counterpart in the most recent release of Ubuntu (8.04 LTS). My system clock is set to Mountain time, so I left that stuff alone and clicked Next.

6. This step is probably where I screwed up the most last time. It's where you choose which desktop environment you want. You can choose from GNOME 2.22, KDE 4.0, KDE 3.5, and XFCE Deskop. Last time I chose KDE 4.0. This time I chose KDE 3.5 and clicked Next.

7. After choosing the desktop environment, the installer took me to the disk partition section of the installation. This should be pretty easy for most people, but I changed a few things. Namely, I put the root and home partitions together, and I deleted one of my Windows partitions because Windows is stupid and bloated. Once I verified the disk partition settings, I clicked Next.

8. This part is where you get to enter the primary system user's information. You can specify the user's name, login, and password. You may also specify a few options including whether or not the root user will have the same password, whether that user will receive system mail, and whether or not that user will be logged in automatically. If you need to, you may change the authentication settings here too. I just entered the information and got on with it. (If you uncheck the box for the root user having the same password, you're prompted for the root password after this screen)

9. Finally, we get to the step where you get to verify all of the installation settings. I think I'll just go with the configuration for now. When you click Install, you're prompted to verify that you really want to install. Use your head on this one.

10. After all of that, it began to format my partitions. One neat thing that I noticed while it was installing was the fact that they rolled commonly-installed packages into what they call "images." This seems to increase installation speed considerably. In the past, I've had most RPM-based distribution installations take as long as (or longer than) Windows takes to install. Granted, the difference there is that you actually get useful stuff once Linux is installed, whereas with Windows, you're stuck with something barely usable and you still have to install drivers for every piece of hardware except your monitor.

    Anyway... the openSUSE folks seem to have addressed that problem recently (maybe just in this release). This went a LOT faster than I've ever seen (on any computer). Despite the use of those images, though, there were still nearly 500 packages that needed to be installed. It seems to be quite evident that the packages are working faster than ever before. It's refreshing (though it did still take quite a bit longer to install than most Debian-based distributions I've tried).

11. After all of the packages are installed, the system does some configuration and then reboots itself. When it comes back up, the installer will appear, do some more hardware detection and configuration, and then go straight into your desktop.

openSUSE actually didn't detect my 1680x1050 resolution (I didn't know any modern distribution wouldn't anymore), so I just went into YaST and set the resolution to what it should be. And then it locked up, and I had to do a hard reboot. Let's hope I can stop that from happening again. I suppose so long as I can still see things other than my mouse, I should be good.

Upon rebooting into my desktop, the resolution was still crappy. When I went to change it this time, though, I noticed that dual-head mode was enabled. That's stupid. I never plug a second monitor into my laptop. I disabled that, then tried to change the resolution. After logging out and back in, it seems to have changed the resolution properly. While I realize that I do have an extremely crappy video card, Ubuntu and others have been able to offer me 3D acceleration. This option is currently unavailable with openSUSE. Perhaps a little research will solve that problem.

After a few minutes of configuration and preference setting, my system locked up yet again. And another hard reset did the trick of getting it operational again. One more and it's outta here!! I do have to say... Minus the quirks with the resolution and drivers, the distribution does not seem bad at all. It might be worth trying out on a different computer--maybe I'd have better luck.

Alright, now I'm going to check the software management tool for a real driver for my video card. Looks like I may have found some. I hope they work. I'm using a "1-click installer" that I found from a Google search. The installation went fine, but after logging out and back in (to have the drivers take effect), it locked up again.

So, round two folks. Again, it might just be user error. It might just be my computer. Or openSUSE really might just suck. I don't think I'll be trying it on my computer again for a while. I might try on a different system altogether, but not on my main laptop.

Those of you who have ever held any sort of conversation with me have probably heard or have personal experience with my bigotry concerning Linux. I absolutely love Linux, and I make all sorts of excuses for the things it doesn't to as well as Windows and Mac OS to convince people to use Linux. It's just the way I am.

I've been using Linux as my main operating system ever since about 2000, though I did dabble with it a few times before that. I started out with RedHat Linux way back when, and then moved on to Mandrake (now Mandriva) Linux. As time passed, I found out about this particular distribution called "SuSE Linux," which claimed to be able to detect hardware even better than the others I had tried. It even looked really pretty. I began to really want to use this distribution. It got to the point where I almost spent $80 on it, just so I could play around.

Eventually, I got my hands on a free copy by downloading all of the packages from their FTP server or something. I managed to get this installed, and I was even more impressed than I had anticipated. SuSE Linux was amazing. But by this time, I had already become addicted to downloading and trying out any distribution I could get my hands on. That meant that SuSE spent a few days or weeks on my computer before I replaced it with something else.

As I tried more and more distributions of Linux, I began to form opinions about them. I observed what certain distributions did well, and made hard mental notes about what each distribution didn't do so well. It wasn't long before I noticed that basically all of the RPM-based distributions I had tried suffered from two major problems: bloated installation packages and severe system slow-downs as time went on. It seemed that RPM-based distributions always slowed down just as bad as Windows machines. Other types of Linux, such as Slackware, Gentoo, and Debian, didn't seem to suffer from this nearly as bad.

With these opinions in mind, I carefully chose which distributions I elected to actually install with plans for keeping around a long time. It seemed like I would always download the RPM-based distributions, but I would do it "just in case" someone else wanted the CD or DVD. Sometimes I would download the distributions and never even bother to burn the CD image to disc. I would just stuff the image away for future reference.

However, despite my opinions of RPM-based distributions, I did end up installing SUSE Enterprise Linux Desktop/Server and openSUSE a few years ago. Part of it was for a class I had; another part was to find a distribution that would suit the needs of one of my buddies. I noticed several improvements in the distributions as the years passed, but those lingering problems with bloated packages and system slow-downs still plagued each distribution.

Last week, openSUSE 11.0 was finally released. Just like always, I downloaded the CD and DVD images with no plans of actually installing openSUSE anywhere. As the downloads were going, I read some reviews posted by other people. It sounded like this particular release of openSUSE actually addressed the issues of bloat and system slow-downs (finally!!), so that made me happy, but I still didn't quite consider installing it on any of my computers. I did use one of the live CD's at work for a day, though, and it treated me well.

This morning I got the itch to change the distribution I had installed on my main computer. I was going through the list of recent downloads that I had, and it occurred to me that the most recent version I had was openSUSE 11.0. It also occurred to me that it had been at least two years since I had seriously considered installing openSUSE or SLED/SLES on my computer. So I decided that maybe everything I had read was worth looking into on my own and possibly revisiting my biased opinion of RPM-based distributions.

I started the installation early this morning while I took notes and worked from another machine. The installation went very smoothly. Everything was logical and clean. It really was a good experience. The packages really did seem to install considerably faster than any release in the past, so I had high hopes for how the system would perform after installation. After everything was said and done, my computer rebooted into the freshly installed KDE 4.0 desktop of openSUSE 11.0. It looked nice, and it was actually functional--which I cannot honestly say about any other distributions that have a KDE 4.0 remix.

Since up to this morning I hadn't been able to use KDE 4 long enough to figure out what's changed, that's where I started. I explored the new menu, which I have to admit is quite funky, but I guess that's how the industry likes things nowadays. I played around with some of the personal settings that it offers. Things seemed logical enough, but it is quite a change from KDE 3.5, which I've been using for quite a while.

After a couple minutes of tinkering, I noticed a little bubble in the corner that said something about installing some system updates. I clicked it and ran through some sort of wizard, but I guess there were no updates to install. Or maybe I just have super-slow Internet and it was taking forever to download the changes. Whatever the case, I kept on tinkering with some settings while the updater did its thing.

Next thing I know, my screen goes black and flashes a few times. Then all I can see is a white mouse on a black background. That's it. Nothing else. I'm really not sure what the problem was. The settings I was playing with seemed fairly innocent, as I modify those sorts of settings all the time on KDE 3.5. After a few minutes of white-mouse-on-black-screen fun, I decided a reboot might solve the problem.

A couple minutes later, I was presented with my loading screen, followed by the black screen and white mouse. That's it. Nothing else.

Needless to say, despite all of the improvements that I did notice in this release of openSUSE, it left a rather bitter taste in my mouth in other areas. openSUSE is no longer on my computer--it's long been replaced with yet another distribution.

Maybe it's user error. Maybe it's my computer's hardware. Or maybe openSUSE really does suck. Whatever the case, it wouldn't surprise me if I wait another year or two to try out another RPM-based distribution.

The following are the steps I took to install Slackware 12.1 on my EeePC this past weekend. I hope you find them complete and helpful!

Installing Slackware 12.1 on an Asus EeePC 701

1. Burn DVD .iso to disc
2. Turn on EeePC
3. Hit F2 to run setup
4. Go to the Advanced tab, and set "OS Installation" to "Start"
5. Go to the Boot tab, and ensure that the external DVD drive will be used for booting before the internal SSD
6. Exit and save changes
7. Just hit enter after rebooting from BIOS configuration when the Slackware boot screen shows up
8. Unless you want to use a different keymap for whatever reason, hit enter when asked to select a keyboard map
9. Login as root
10. Run fdisk or cfdisk on /dev/hdc
11. Remove all partitions (unless you know what you're doing)
    1. fdisk: d to delete (you may have to select multiple partitions to delete if you have more than one for some reason)
    2. cfdisk: Select all partitions individually with up/down arrow keys and use the left/right arrow keys to select delete from the menu at the bottom. Hit enter to run the delete command when it's highlighted.
12. Create one partition that takes the whole SSD (again, unless you know what you're doing)
    1. fdisk: n (for new); enter; p (for primary); enter; 1 (for the first primary partition); enter; enter (to start at the beginning of the drive); enter (to select the end of the drive)
    2. cfdisk: Select the new command with the left/right arrow keys and hit enter when it's selected. Make it a primary parition, and have it take the whole SSD (3997.49MB in my case).
13. Set the type of the new partition to be Linux
    1. fdisk: t (for type); enter; 83 (for Linux); enter
    2. cfdisk: Use the left/right arrow keys to select the type command at the bottom and hit enter when it's selected. Choose 83.
14. Set the new partition (or the first, if you decided to make more than one) to be bootable
    1. fdisk: a (for bootable); enter; 1 (for primary partition 1); enter
    2. cfdisk: Select the bootable command from the bottom using the left/right arrow keys. Hit enter when it's selected.
15. Write the changes to the partition table and quit
    1. fdisk: w
    2. cfdisk: Use the left/right arrow keys to select the write command from the bottom. Hit enter when it's selected. Type 'yes' to verify your intent, acknowledging that your previous data will be "gone". Then select the quit command.
16. Run setup
17. Select TARGET to specify where you will be installing
18. Select /dev/hdc1
19. Format the partition
20. To reduce write cycles, many people suggest formatting with ext2, which is a non-journaling filesystem. However, many people claim that the limited number write cycles of SSD is not something to worry about. Use your best judgement on this one. Hit OK after the format is complete.
21. Select where you plan to install Slackware from. In my case, it's the DVD. I usually tell it to find the media automatically. Select manual if you know which device your DVD drive is. Mine was /dev/sr0.
22. Select the packages you wish to install. This is where your installation will likely differ greatly from mine because of personal preferences. I do a lot of development, so I will keep a lot of things for that. Here's what I selected to install:
    1. Base Linux System
    2. Various Applications that do not need X
    3. Program Development (C, C++, Lisp, Perl, etc.)
    4. Linux kernel source
    5. Qt and the K Desktop Environment for X
    6. System Libraries (needed by KDE, GNOME, X, and more)
    7. Networking (TCP/IP, UUCP, Mail, News)
    8. Tcl/Tk script languages
    9. X Window System
    10. X Applications
    11. Games
23. Choose whether or not you want to be picky about your software. To save a little extra disk space, I'm going to manually choose what I don't want. This includes:
    1. A: cpio, cryptsetup, cups, floppy, genpower, jfsutils, mdadm, mt-st, mtx, quota, reiserfsprogs, rpm2tgz, tcsh, xfsprogs
    2. AP: amp, cdparanoia, hplip, gutenprint, jed, joe, jove, ksh93, mysql, rpm, xfsdump, zsh
    3. D: gcc-gfortran, gcc-gnat, gcc-java, mercurial, p2c
    4. N: elm, epic4, httpd, mailx, mutt, netatalk, pine, popa3d, proftpd, rp-pppoe, samba, slrn, tin, trn, vsftpd
    5. TCL: hfsutils
    6. X: anthy, bdftopcf, beforelight, libhangul, sazanami-fonts-ttf, sinhala_lklug-font-ttf, tibmachuni-font-ttf, wqy-zenhei-font-ttf
    7. XAP: audacious, audacious-plugins, gftp, mozilla-thunderbird, pan, seamonkey
24. Wait for the installation to complete. It took almost a full hour with my package selection, leaving me with 485.4MB free on my 4GB SSD.
25. Choose whether or not you want to make a bootable USB... I skipped it.
26. Choose how you wish to install LILO. I chose simple.
27. Choose your frame buffer mode for the console. I chose 640x480x256.
28. Specify any optional kernal parameters. I left this blank, originally, but later learned that having 'hdc=noprobe' increased my disk access speed by about 13 times.
29. Specify whether you wish to use UTF-8 on the console. I chose no.
30. Specify where to install LILO. I chose MBR.
31. Specify your mouse type. I chose imps2.
32. Specify whether or not you wish to have gpm run at boot, which allows you to use your mouse in the console. I chose yes.
33. Configure your network.
34. Give your eeepc a hostname. This can be whatever you'd like.
35. Specify the domain for your network. This can be whatever you'd like as well.
36. Configure your IP address information. I just chose DHCP.
37. Set the DHCP hostname. I left this blank.
38. Review and confirm your network settings.
39. Choose which services you wish to have running immediately after booting.
40. See if you want to try custom screen fonts. I usually don't bother.
41. Specify whether your hardware clock is set to local time or UTC.
42. Choose your timezone.
43. Select your preferred window manager. I chose KDE.
44. Set the root password.
45. Slackware has been installed! Exit the setup program and reboot.
46. Hit F2 to enter the BIOS again.
47. Set OS Installation to "Finished" and exit the BIOS, saving changes.
48. Reboot into Slackware! The first boot takes a while because of all the initial setup. It is faster on subsequent reboots, assuming you don't add new services (like apache and mysql) at boot.

Change a few settings around.

1. vi /etc/inittab
2. (set default runlevel to 4)
3. vi /etc/lilo.conf
4. add 'compact' somewhere to make it boot faster
5. change the boot delay so it's not 120 seconds

Now for installing various drivers.

1. Install the ethernet driver: http://people.redhat.com/csnook/atl2/atl2-2.0.4.tar.bz2
   1. wget http://people.redhat.com/csnook/atl2/atl2-2.0.4.tar.bz2
   2. tar jxf atl2-2.0.4.tar.bz2
   3. cd atl2-2.0.4
   4. make
   5. cp atl2.ko /lib/modules/2.6.24.5-smp/kernel/drivers/net/
   6. depmod -a
   7. modprobe atl2
   8. ifconfig
2. Install the drivers for the wireless: http://snapshots.madwifi.org/special/madwifi-nr-r3366+ar5007.tar.gz
   1. wget http://snapshots.madwifi.org/special/madwifi-nr-r3366+ar5007.tar.gz
   2. tar zxvf madwifi-nr-r3366+ar5007.tar.gz
   3. cd madwifi-nr-r3366+ar5007.tar.gz
   4. scripts/madwifi-unload
   5. scripts/find-madwifi-modules.sh uname -r
   6. make && make install
   7. modprobe ath_pci

I kind of stopped taking notes after I realized how much fun it was to have Slackware on my EeePC. If you have questions, just add a comment below.

First of all, I have to tell everyone how great of a distribution Slackware is. I have personally sampled (meaning that I downloaded, installed, and ran for a trial period) at least 50 different distributions. It seems that, no matter how fancy a new distribution is, I always find myself returning to Slackware. I have to admit, it doesn't have a lot of the eyecandy and user-friendly features of other mainstream distributions right off the bat, but you could add them if you wanted to. Among my reasons for liking Slackware so much are:

• It's the fastest (by default) I've used
• Stability
• Security
• Educational value

Now that we have a little background as to why I like Slackware so much, let's move on to the installation, shall we? To make it a little more simple, I'm just including the notes that I took while installing.

• Insert disc 1

• Boot Menu: Hit enter to boot with default options

• Select keyboard map: Enter for default US

• Login as root

• Check partition scheme: # fdisk /dev/hda

  Here are some useful commands to get around in fdisk:

  • p to print partition table
  • d to delete, followed by parition number
  • c to create; primary/extended; start sector; end sector
  • a to toggle bootable flag
  • w to write parition table
  • q to quit

• # setup

• ADDSWAP to activate swap partition

  • select your swap partition and hit ok
  • choose whether you wish to check for bad blocks while preparing the swap partition [no]
  • hit ok when your swap partition has been configured

• Choose your root (/) parition

  • Select the proper partition from the list and hit select
  • Choose your formatting type
    • Format: Quick format with no bad block checking
    • Check: Slow format that checks for bad blocks
    • No: No, do not format this partition
    • [ FORMAT ]
  • Choose filesystem
    • ext2: Standard Linux Ext2 Filesystem
    • ext3: Ext3 Journaling Filesystem
    • reiserfs: ReiserFS Journaling Filesystem
    • [ REISERFS ]
  • Add other paritions and follow the same process as above, specifying the mount point
  • Hit ok when the partitions have been setup successfully

• Specify whether you'd like any existing FAT or NTFS partitions to be mounted in Linux

  • [ YES ]
  • Select the partition
  • Specify the mount point

• Hit ok when the FAT and NTFS partitions have been setup

• Choose your installation source

  • Install from a Slackware CD or DVD
  • Install from a hard drive partition
  • Install from NFS (Network File System)
  • Install from a pre-mounted directory
  • [ CD or DVD ]

• Choose the CD/DVD device

  • auto: Scan for the CD or DVD drive (recommended)
  • manual: Manually specify CD or DVD by device name
  • [ AUTO ]

• Select the package sets you'd like to install and hit ok

• Select prompting mode

  • full Install everything (3+ GB of software, recommended)
  • expert Choose individual packages from interactive menus
  • menu Choose groups of packages from interactive menus
  • newbie Use verbose prompting (and follow tagfiles)
  • custom Use custom tagfiles in the package directories
  • tagpath Use tagfiles in the subdirectories of a custom path
  • [ FULL ]

• Specify your kernel

  • bootdisk Use the kernel from the installation bootdisk
  • cdrom Use a kernel from the Slackware CD or NFS mount
  • floppy Install a zimage or bzimage from a DOS floppy
  • skip Skip this menu (use the default /boot/vmlinuz)
  • [ CDROM ]

• Re-insert disc 1

  • Select your kernel
  • [ /cdrom/kernels/sata.i/bzImage ]

• Make a bootdisk

  • Create Make a Linux bootdisk in /dev/fd0
  • Skip Skip making a bootdisk
  • [ SKIP ]

• Modem configuration [ NO MODEM ]

• Specify whether you'd like to start hotplug/udev at boot [ YES ]

• Install the bootloader, LILO

  • simple Try to install LILO automatically
  • expert Use expert lilo.conf setup menu
  • skip Do not install LILO
  • [ SIMPLE ]

• Choose your frame buffer mode for LILO [ standard ]

• Pass the kernel a parameter if you have an IDE CD/DVD-RW drive

  • [ hdc=ide-scsi ]

• Select LILO destination

  • Root Install to superblock (not for use with XFS)
  • Floppy Install to a formatted floppy in /dev/fd0 (A:)
  • MBR Install to Master Boot Record (possibly unsafe)
  • [ MBR ]

• Select your mouse type [ IMPS2 ]

• Specify whether you'd like to start GPM at boot [ NO ]

• Specify whether you'd like to configure your network

  • [ YES ]
  • Enter your hostname
  • Enter your domain name
  • Specify IP setup
    • static IP Use a static IP address to configure ethernet
    • DHCP Use a DHCP server to configure ethernet
    • loopback Set up a loopback connection (modem or no net)
    • [ DHCP ]
  • Specify DHCP parameters
  • Verify and accept network configuration

• Specify services to start at boot time

  • rc.cups
  • rc.httpd
  • rc.mysqld
  • rc.pcmcia
  • rc.samba
  • rc.scanluns
  • rc.sendmail
  • rc.syslog
  • rc.sshd

• Specify whether you'd like to try out some screen fonts [ NO ]

• Specify whether your machine's clock is set to local time or UTC/GMT [ NO ]

• Select timezone

• Select your default desktop [ KDE ]

• Set a root password

• Reboot

• Login as root

• Add a new (normal) user: # adduser

• Configure XWindows

  • # xorgcfg
  • save the configuration to /etc/X11/xorg.conf

• Logout and back in as the new user

• Bring up the GUI

  • $ startx

Begin using your system!!

Note: This tutorial is a continuation of yesterday's tutorial about installing SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 on my HP Pavilion dv8000. I may or may not refer to steps that I took during installation, so if you are confused, you might want to check out the previous article.

The process of installing and enabling a wireless adapter will vary greatly from machine to machine. Some lucky folks have wireless adapters that come with official Linux drivers. For the rest of us, we usually have a Broadcom-compatible adapter. In order to use a Broadcom device, I use a program called ndiswrapper, which basically takes the drivers for the devices to function with Windows and wraps them in such a manner that Linux can use. Since I have the 64-bit version of SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) 10, I need to get a 64-bit driver in order for my wireless to function properly. These 64-bit drivers took me a while to get ahold of the first time I got my wireless working (on SuSE Linux 10.1), but I still have them in my archives, so I should be fully prepared to get my wireless working. In this article I assume that you are going to use ndiswrapper to install drivers for a Broadcom device. So let's get started.

$ su -

# lspci

lspci | grep Broadcom
lspci | grep Wireless

# lspci | grep Broadcom
06:02.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation Dell Wireless 1470 DualBand WLAN (rev 02)

# lspci -n | grep 06:02.0
06:02.0 Class 0280: 14e4:4319 (rev 02)

# cd ~/wireless
# ls

# ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf
Installing bcmwl5
Forcing parameter IBSSGMode|0 to IBSSGMode|2

# ndiswrapper -l
Installed drivers:
nbcmwl5          driver installed

# cd /etc/ndiswrapper/bcmwl5
# ls
14E4:4318.5.conf  bcmwl5.inf  bcmwl564.sys

# ln -s 14E4:4318.5.conf 14E4:4319.5.conf

# ndiswrapper -l
Installed drivers:
bcmwl5          driver installed, hardware present

# modprobe ndiswrapper

This will be the second time for me putting SLED 10 on my laptop, but I've also put SLES 10, SuSE Linux 10.1, and various others on this laptop several times before. It _has_ been a few months since I last installed Linux on this laptop, so we'll see how well I remember how to do it. I will be installing the 64-bit DVD version, so as to take better advantage of the 64-bit capabilities of my processor. This shouldn't have a drastic effect on the overall procedure, compared to that of installing the 32-bit CD/DVD version.

Here are some specs of my laptop:

• Make/Model: HP Pavilion dv8000
• CPU: AMD Turion 64 ML-40 (2.2Ghz)
• RAM: 1.25GB PC2700 DDR333 SODIMM
• HDD: 5400RPM 80GB
• Video: ATI Radeon Xpress 200M (128MB dedicated RAM, up to an additional 128MB shared RAM)

Note: I make a few assumptions in the writing of this article. One is that you are on a machine running Windows XP. If your computer can't handle Windows XP, you probably don't want to be running SLED 10. Another assumption is that you don't yet have your hard drive partitioned into more than one partition. I also assume that you already have the installation media in good working condition. For those of you in the BYU-I Linux Users Group (LUG), I am willing to make copies of the discs if you provide the media or discuss some sort of compensation if you want me to provide the media.

20 Things You Won't Like About Windows Vista

I happened upon this article whilst glancing through my daily Slashdot update. From what I was able to read so far, I agree 100% with this bloke who wrote the article.

I had the opportunity to play with a Vista beta a couple of months ago, and I was pretty impressed by certain aspects of the new OS, but in the end, I went back to my Linux. One thing, for example, was the new hardware rating system that's integrated into Vista. It's an excellent idea--Windows will rate your system to give you some rating on an arbitrary PC standards scale from 1 to 10. The higher the rating, the better your computer is. Armed with this rating, a PC user can then go to a store to purchase a new piece of software. They can compare their PC's rating with the requirements of the application and be a happy camper when the program actually runs when they get home. Absolutely wonderful concept. The problem is this: my laptop was rated at a 2.0, if I remember correctly. Here are the related specs on my laptop (HP Pavilion dv8000 series):

• Processor: AMD Turion 64 ML-40 (2.20Ghz)
• RAM: 1.1GB DDR PC2700
• Video: ATI Radeon Xpress 200M (128MB dedicated RAM, along with 128MB shared RAM)

Now, to put things into perspective, I have done a few benchmarks with my laptop up against my computer at work. Please note that these benchmarks are very limited in scope and are mostly for my personal satisfaction. My computer at work is a HyperThreaded Pentium 4 at 3.4Ghz with 1GB of RAM. As to the flavor of RAM, I'm not sure what to say, but I'd imagine that it runs at least 400Mhz compared to my 333Mhz. On several occasions, I've booted up both systems simultaneously. They both booted up Windows XP SP2, though my laptop has Home and the one at work has Professional. After logging in and letting everything settle down for a minute or two, I started up the NetBeans IDE in which I spend oh so much of my time. My laptop had the IDE up and ready to use (classpaths scanned and everything) 50 seconds before my work machine was to the same point. And this all happened before I upgraded from 512MB of RAM to 1GB in my laptop. I haven't tested since that upgrade.

So if my laptop, which beats out a HyperThreaded Pentium 4 running at 3.4Ghz with a gig of RAM in certain uncontrolled conditions, is rated as a 2 on the scale, what does that say for my 3-year-old desktop? How would that fare with Vista installed? I'm not really prepared to drop another grand or so on a new computer to meet Microsoft's anticipated hardware requirements once Vista is released, which is one reason I'm glad I love Linux.