Guest ianforest Posted March 4, 2005 Report Share Posted March 4, 2005 Hi there, I've just downloaded the 10.1 distro 3 cd's from the Mandrake website and have installed it on my desktop. First problem, why can't I install KDE? During the install it shows what installation media is available, 3 CD's and CD4 for KDE. Where is this CD and how do I get it??? Ok, onto the wireless stuff? I have 2 USB Wi-Fi devices...a Netgear WG111 and a Belkin F5D7050. I can't get either to work in MDK. If I go into the MCC "thingie" under "unknown devices" in hardware it does recognise them as what they are - so how to install them? I did some searching around and discovered that ndiswrapper was the way forward. It wasn't installed with the version of 10.1 I have, so I located an rpm for it and installed v0.9 - that all went ok, but I haven't got a clue how it works. If I go into a terminal session and type "ndiswrapper" it reports back with "unknown command" - so I don't know where I went wrong with that. So how do I do all of this then? I've read mountains of other replies in other forums but all of the replies ASSUME that you have some sort of network connection whereas I do not, apart from my XP notebook which I am using now. In very simple, noob friendly terms, how do I get either my WG111 or Belkin USB device to work on my installation of MDK 10.1??? I'm probably asking a lot, but knowledge is power, and I have none of it at the moment!!! Over to you! Please! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aRTee Posted March 4, 2005 Report Share Posted March 4, 2005 I don't have hands on experience with ndiswrapper but my brother has used it on Mdk, and I put the info on my website, config page. If you can't run the command ndiswrapper, maybe you have to do su and type your root password, to get admin (root) rights...? Oh, welcome to the board! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adamw Posted March 4, 2005 Report Share Posted March 4, 2005 you have KDE already; KDE 3.2. CD4 (which only Club members get, IIRC) contains an unsupported 'quick' build of KDE 3.3 (which was released right around the same time as 10.1 - there was a _huge_ amount of requests for 3.3, even though there was no way it could be properly built and tested in time, so a quickie, unsupported build was provided). It's rather hard to provide a noob guide to ndiswrapper. First, remove the package you installed, unless it's the one that came on your CDs. Then install the one that's on the CDs, using the software installer. Now comes the tricky part; you need to find the firmware for your wireless adapter. Your driver CDs and Google should help here. Then you need to put this in /usr/lib/hotplug/firmware (IIRC). Then you need to tell ndiswrapper to read the firmware and set up your card (I think the command is something like ndiswrapper -i nameoffirmware ; I'm not running Linux right now, I can't check). Then run drakconnect to setup the actual connection, and tell it to use the ndiswrapper module. Or alternatively, sod the whole nightmarish mess that is 11g wireless on Linux (thanks to card manufacturers) and buy a wireless bridge. Worked for me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ianforest Posted March 4, 2005 Report Share Posted March 4, 2005 well i'm beginning to think that a wireless bridge is the way forward and may have to go down that road. Why does wireless suck so much on Linux??? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darkelve Posted March 5, 2005 Report Share Posted March 5, 2005 well i'm beginning to think that a wireless bridge is the way forward and may have to go down that road. Why does wireless suck so much on Linux??? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> 1. Because hardware firms often don't write the drivers to make them work in Linux... which means the Open Source community has to write them themselves, often with reverse-engineering and without any documentation 2. Because people don't check Hardware compatibility before buying a new hardware product, thus prolonging 1. 3. Because there's no real standard that is adhered to, so that all systems can interoperate these are things I can think of right now. ... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Havin_it Posted March 5, 2005 Report Share Posted March 5, 2005 ianforest, welcome to the board. You are not the first to despair of the wireless scenario, but the ndiswrapper team have gone a tremendous way towards making Windows-based, closed-source hardware work with Linux. I don't know about the Linksys, but the Belkin device is listed as one that does work with ndiswrapper. I actually own one, but haven't had occasion to try it out with Linux. Either head over to http://ndiswrapper.sf.net and locate the 'Installation Wiki' or search this board for 'ndiswrapper, and you'll find PLENTY of info on this subject. Chow down, buddy! (Oh, and do ask if you need jargon-busting on any of it.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adamw Posted March 5, 2005 Report Share Posted March 5, 2005 darkelve, you missed the another important reason; 802.11g cards have stupid designs where the firmware is loaded onto the card each time it's initialised, and the firmwares are invariably not free software, so distros can't include them. This is half the pain of getting even the devices that work to go. You have to find out what the hell a firmware _is_, find it, make sure it's the right one, find out where to put it... 802.11b cards actually work fairly well under Linux. Apart from 'use a bridge', my advice for wireless on Linux is always to just get a b card unless you really actually need the speed of g. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ianforest Posted March 5, 2005 Report Share Posted March 5, 2005 (Oh, and do ask if you need jargon-busting on any of it.) <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Well, it's funny you say that. Take the installation wiki for example, about a third of the way down is "Installation - 1. Compile and install" - none of that makes sense - does it need to be done at all? I got an RPM, which appeared to install ndiswrapper, but in a terminal screen it just said "command not found" - so is it installed...or not? If I re-run the RPM it says it's installed...so how can I run some of the other commands that ndiswrapper provides such as ndiswrapper -i <.inf file> and ndiswrapper -l !!! I knew moving to Linux wouldn't be easy :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frosterrj Posted March 7, 2005 Report Share Posted March 7, 2005 I have had good luck with Linuxant's Driverloader. Its not free (as in beer or any other), but for $20, its been a bargain so far since everytime I try a new version of MDK (now 10.2 beta 3) something is broken (new?!) from the previous version and Tech Support has been excellent, even to the point of helping to fix some bugs in the version.h file of the beta3 release. Totally out of scope for the product, but nice to know they will go that far. My card is a b card, but some f-'d up version that none of the open source packages will be useful for. You can get a trial license for 20 days. Maybe that's the route to go to use what you've already got, before you buy new hardwar. Good luck, Robert Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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