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Anybody able to get Mandriva in the MSI Wind?


ramfree17
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That is for the Eee PC but I think I will give that a whirl as I am now distro-whoring just to get some wireless connectivity on the Wind. My last resort would be to replace the wifi card, or buy an external dongle. :(

 

The Wind is perfect that my Fujitsu Amilo Pro V7100 is now delegated to be a Windows game machine for my wife. I have a beefed up 10" unit though since I have 2GB on it to allow me to use some Eclipse-based development tools. Right now it is booting mostly in Windows since I use it for work (I am employed in a MS-biased shop) but I am not giving up on my quest to go Linux for those times that I just need a computer.

 

Keyboard is great even with the misplaced function key which doesn't have any effect on my typing speed. I have pretty long fingers but adjusting to the keyboard didnt take long. The trackpad is a little small but manageable. I have oily fingers so my trackpad is not that good to look at right now. Most of the function keys were working when I was using Xubuntu but right now it has the PCLinuxOS minime installed and I haven't really tried testing it much.

 

The weight is perfect since I bring it everyday. The Amilo is breaking my back before since it weighs around 3kg without the brick and the backpack. My only gripes (which might be Windows related) are that I cannot leave it downloading overnight since I will always find it rebooted in the morning, and if Windows hangs and I force it to shutdown then it sometimes fails to boot up unless I first visit the BIOS menu.

 

ciao!

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thanks adamw, i will try scrounging for my usb hdd enclosure and connect a spare cd-rw on it. when you said "mostly work", does that include the crappy realtek wifi card that the original Wind comes with?

 

Btw, this is the second distro that doesnt support booting from disk. OpenSuse aborts the installation since it insists on finding a CD/DVD drive. the only thing going for the aborted installation is that OpenSuse gives out a user understandable error message.

 

ciao!

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I use Mandriva 9 since the alpha version on a Medion akoya mini, a clone of the wind with no noticeable problem. I installed the first version with an external cd-reader. I am a long time kde user but kde 4 offers not enough possibilities to use such a tiny screen so I rediscovered gnome and it's a great thing. The only problem is that video's and compiz is too much for the atom.

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i havent been able to install mandriva in my wind yet but my model is with the first batch that uses the 8187SE module. The bottom sticker has these details:

  FCC ID: TX2-RTL8187SE
 IC ID: 6317A-RTL8187SE

 

my understanding is that the new models may have one of the two new modules with better linux support. :(

 

ciao!

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  • 2 weeks later...

i was able to install rc9, and it detected the wifi card to be needing the r8080 modules. however when configuring the card after the installation failed because it cannot install the dkms modules. :wall:

 

i tried setting up via the ndiswrapper route and the dialog reported a success but i am just getting a blank page in the "select your wireless network" part. :(

 

ciao!

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i haven't seen any message and when i try to replicate it again it goes directly to the wireless selection screen. i already tried unloading the ndiswrapper driver and uninstalling ndiswrapper but to no avail.

 

i will try the console drakconnect tip when i get home. thanks.

 

ciao!

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You can't uninstall ndiswrapper - it's in the kernel. Well, you can uninstall the userspace stuff, but then all you have is a broken ndiswrapper. =)

 

Once you switch to ndiswrapper in drakconnect, you can't switch back to the native driver using drakconnect - it's a limitation of how drakconnect's written. To switch back you have to poke /etc/modprobe.conf manually. If you post your /etc/modprobe.conf I'll post the necessary changes to switch back to the native driver, if you wanted to try that. Otherwise, to get it working with ndiswrapper, try the Wiki workaround.

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just a quick update:

 

- the terminal drakconnect works as it can see my access point. dhclient can't find any offers so i still cant get an ip address on the wifi. im basically on the smae boat as xubuntu. :(

- i noticed a message in the startup that it cant load the rtl8187se drivers because the kernel source rpm is not installed. unfortunately the kernel has already been upgraded since i can't find the matching kernel src rpm for the one i installed. i also found a rtls8187se-enabled kernel and downloaded that but as adamw said i have to do something to the modprobe.conf so ill post it when i have some free time to tinker.

 

thanks.

 

ciao!

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