After trying a lot of alternate distros i settled for LXDE in the form of peppermint.
As pointed out by Kal_El there are a few about that still use Gnome 2, but that hasn't much life left in it, i couldn't take to the new Gome3\unity, KDE is very nice, just a bit overkill for what i need.
XFCE Is ok as well. Good job Linux offers us choices, a few years ago it was said that was a problem with Linux, that there was to much choice. Worked to mine and others advantage in the long run it seems

OK, gave Chakra a go, but couldn`t get the boot loader to install.

So I went back to my roots in the Linux world and installed Slackware 13.37. Now have a full up to date system again (yes, I even got the sound AND printer working!!!)


Oh, and if you want to try Arch but are 100% afraid of configuring it, may I suggest looking at ARCHBANG.

As a relative newcomer to Linux, as I mentioned earlier in this thread, I am really impressed with 11.04., to the extent that I want to install it alongside W2K on one of my desktops. I want to keep the W2K as there are a few odd old applications which I want to keep running.

My only concern is that if I am running Ubuntu on this machine does it leave the Windows OS vulnerable to virus/malware attack?

I had a play with Arch yesterday when I had a day off and I have to say I was really impressed.

I'm a fairly experienced Linux user (I use it full-time at home and at work) and the install was relatively straightforward and quite enjoyable.

However, I'm now back to my beloved Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. Why? Because after a day with Arch, I felt like I was getting trapped in that familiar loop--something doesn't work, Google it, find out how to fix it, fix it.

That's fine on days when I'm not doing any real work, but it got to the point where I wanted to format a USB stick, opened Disk Utility only to find that I didn't have the necessary thing installed to do so. How minimal do you need an OS?

To be fair, it's aimed at the hobbyist end of Linux use, not your everyday PC user. I would love to play with it, but I just don't have the time, and I don't much fancy having to Google about for help all the time. I had enough of that with Ubuntu.

ArchBang sounds interesting though. Might have to try that one on the Eee when I've fixed it.

Hi Folks

Needs some help. As per the title, yesterday I found that my wireless connectivity wasn't working. Some investigation and faff has discovered that the autorun setting in my wireless network driver dialog was saying Invalid driver!.

Last auto update was Thursday evening and it was all working on Friday evening so I'm not sure what's happened.

Googled for some help and have uninstalled and re-installed ndiswrapper several times in the hope that it would clear out the problem and reconfigure the driver. No joy. Although I have now lost any reference to autorun.

I've now d/l and installed (apparent successfully) the RTL8187B driver for my netgear wireless usb. However, it is now saying net8187b Hardware present: no and I still can't connect wirelessly.

I'm stuck now. I never had to do any install to get wireless to work in the first place so I don't know what autorun needs to be installed/configured to. I guess that I need that to make any usb device work before I can expect the network usb to work.

I guess I need to dig out an autorun.inf, .sys & .cat files from somewhere??

Ubuntu
Release 11.04 (natty)
Kernel 2.6.38-11-generic-pae
Gnome 2.32.1
Netgear wg111v3 usb adaptor.

Probably the wrong driver. Ignore what driver the manufacturer says you need, many manufacturers change the chipsets of the devices and keep the model number the same.

Open up a terminal and run:
This will give you an output of all your USB devices with their IDs. Find the one that belongs to your WiFi adapter and do a search on the id number and linux (for instance my lsusb gives me so i'd search "0b05:1742 linux").

ndiswrapper is a hold-over from the bad old days when Linux had little support for wireless adapters, so you needed to be able to use Windows drivers under Linux.

Many cards are now supported directly in the kernel (i haven't come across any that haven't been for a couple of years now) and ndiswrapper is on my list of things to delete after installing a distro.

Anyway, find you device ID, see if it's supported directly, and you'll probably even find a Ubuntu-specific tutorial to help you get it up and running.

lsusb gives:

Bus 002 Device 005: ID 0846:4260 NetGear, Inc. WG111v3 54 Mbps Wireless [realtek RTL8187B]

Which sourceforge points to as:

http://www.avengergear.com/upload/WG111v3.tar.bz2

Tried this site 4 or 5 times today and it simply doesn't respond. It looks like it is supposed to have a wg111v3.inf in it but I don't see why I need it.

As I said initially, I never did anything to get wireless working to start with, so I don't know what driver autorun was using before it suddenly stopped.

The RTL8187B business is new for today. As wg111v3 would be. I just want to put back whatever was there before.

I'm struggling to google for useful advice. Nothing I've found seems to work particularly. This 8187b driver business has at least installed but it doesn't work in any obvious way.

I've found several resources that point me back to the avengergear tar which simply doesn't work either.

Most frustrating. A lot easier when ndiswrapper just worked.

You shouldn't need ndiswrapper or the tarball from that site. This site indicates that the driver for that adapter has been part of the kernel since 2.6.27. The instructions on that page should work for Ubuntu too.

Basically just install the "wireless-tools" package and it should automatically be setup. If it doesn't you want to .

I've already got the wireless tools. I'm inclined to agree I don't need these drivers given that I've been working without them until yesterday.

tried the modprobe rtl8187. made no difference.

Can you tell me what you have set as autorun on your wireless driver screen if you're using it? That seems to be the crux of it. Whatever was there was critical.

Removed both the wg111v3 and rtl8187 drivers and the wireless tools. Re-installed wireless tools on the off chance it re-instated something. Nothing doing.

Still no wireless connection.

mmmmm, so now I'm back where I started. Another clearout and a re-install of wireless tools and suddenly "autorun" has re-appeared in my windows wireless drivers settings saying "driver invalid!". In the etc/ndiswrapper folder there is now an autorun folder which is empty. I guess this is the source of the error given that there are no files in there.

How do I get sensible files into there? Which reinstall has recreated the folder and why hasn't it put the right files in there?

there might be at least one distro tried tonight

although this time i have virtualbox installed so no real major stress..heh

I have no wireless driver screen, and hence no autorun, because i'm not using Windows drivers, i'm using the built-in kernel drivers.

Uninstall ndiswrapper, unplug your wireless card, reboot, and once you're all up and running again plug in the wireless card.

So long as you've got "wireless-tools" installed it should be simply a matter of clicking on the "Network Manager" icon (two arrows facing opposite directions) in the notification area and clicking on your network from the list that appears there.

If that doesn't work then the only thing i can suggest is trying it with a Windows machine in case the adapter itself has died.

Thanks esot-eric, I'll give this a go tonight.

Ok, so i've uninstalled ndiswrapper as suggested.

Now I'm seeing the networks of various neighbours listed - this suggests the usb is working if it is finding networks I guess.

However, it generally isn't showing my network but it does appear very occasionally and prompts me for a password 3 or 4 times before failing to connect and disappearing.

I've cabled in the router to check that and it seemed fine. I tested it on sunday anyway by plugging my tv into it and browsing thru it.

Anyone?

But i presume you're tv was done using the cable and not the wireless?

You ideally need to check you're wireless by using a lappy or asking you're neighbours to check it for you.

There could be a fault with you're wireless that was just bad coincidence when you had you're update.

Are the other networks shown experiencing the problem?

If so then there's either something wrong with the adapter or there's something interfering with the signal.

If other networks are consistently available then the problem lies with the router. Either the router's wifi is failing, there's some kind of interference, or you're on the edge of range for the router.

Are there any other devices connected to wifi? If so, and they have a consistent connection you can rule out router failure.

Are there any open wifi networks around? If so try connecting to one. If it connects properly and remains stable then the problem is likely with the router.

Try changing the channel your router is broadcasting on in case neighbour's are using the same channel and interfering with your signal.

I'm going to try and connect my ps3 wirelessly tonight. Didn't have time last night. That should rule in/out the router as the issue. Not sure it's a range or interference problem as it's been working for the best part of a year. Right now the router is sitting about a foot away from the adaptor due to moving all the kit back into the living room to use a wired connection.

I even did two factory resets and re-configured the router last night without any obvious joy. There's no error logging to suggest anything is broken on the router.

All the networks I can see are protected. When I try to connect it just whirls endlessly before eventually prompting for the password again. You'd expect it to fail quickly when I supply an obviously incorrect password I would have thought.

Good idea on the channel. When I did the reset I jsut left it on the default chan 11.

Mightily close to drilling a hole through the wall and feeding 25 feet of cable through it.

nope. simply partition your hard drive wich it should prompt you to do on install. I would question whether you can run Ubuntu on a machine old enough to have W2K on it though. It struggles on my 2.8 GHz single core job. Just don't try running Unity! personal dislike aside your graphics card and CPU will probably fall on its face

Pentium 1.6Ghz and Ubuntu 11.04 here - no problems.

Ubuntu 11.04 hardware specs

https://help.ubuntu.com/11.04/server...o-install.html

https://help.ubuntu.com/11.04/instal...supported.html

Well it looks like it's my router. The PS3 can't see it.

Having tried two factory resets I guess it's time for it to be filed under Bravo-1-Niner.



Nothing to do with ubuntu or my usb adapter after all. Shoulda checked the router in the first place.

Result then.

Well, I now need a new router but at least I have removed the need for ndiswrapper with isot-eric's help. Small steps.