Arch Linux on my new laptop

Post by **Patrick** » Mon Dec 12, 2005 10:18 am

I got Arch running on my laptop fairly easy. I had a little trouble with the wireless card not initializing properly on the first try after wiping off windows. This was rectified by using the wi-fi card under the Linspire live CD. It now comes ok every time:
http://pdavila.homelinux.org/blog/?p=71

It's been a while since I played with wireless cards & laptops. I assume I'll have to setup different profiles for my wireless environments:
- home: static IP & encrypted
- work: dynamic & encrypted
- internet cafe: dynamic & no encryption
- Dan's house: static IP & encrypted
etc..

I noticed the wireless network option in the KDE control center has options for different wireless profiles. I'll try playing with those. Anyone have experience with this feature under KDE?

Tsuroerusu · Post by **Tsuroerusu** » Mon Dec 12, 2005 11:54 am

Yo Pat, check out wireless assistant and Netgo, those are handy dandy wireless apps.

Netgo allows you to simply set up profiles for different networks, use that in conjunction with KWifiManager.

Post by **Patrick** » Mon Dec 12, 2005 12:10 pm

Tsuroerusu wrote:Yo Pat, check out wireless assistant and Netgo, those are handy dandy wireless apps.

Netgo allows you to simply set up profiles for different networks, use that in conjunction with KWifiManager.

That looks nice. It was mentioned in an article Marcel Gagne wrote a couple of months back:
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8355

Tsuroerusu · Post by **Tsuroerusu** » Mon Dec 12, 2005 12:12 pm

Patrick wrote:
Tsuroerusu wrote:Yo Pat, check out wireless assistant and Netgo, those are handy dandy wireless apps.

Netgo allows you to simply set up profiles for different networks, use that in conjunction with KWifiManager.
That looks nice. It was mentioned in an article Marcel Gagne wrote a couple of months back:
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8355

Yeah, kudos to Marcel, he mentioned it on Call For Help, and that's where I found out about it

Post by **Patrick** » Mon Dec 12, 2005 1:14 pm

Tsuroerusu wrote:Yo Pat, check out wireless assistant and Netgo, those are handy dandy wireless apps. Netgo allows you to simply set up profiles for different networks, use that in conjunction with KWifiManager.

Works great! Thanks for the tip!

Tsuroerusu · Post by **Tsuroerusu** » Mon Dec 12, 2005 6:57 pm

Speaking of Marcel, how about getting him back on the show? It's been almost a year since he last was on.

Post by **dann** » Mon Dec 12, 2005 7:16 pm

It's only be about 3 months. He was on the 2nd year show extravaganza!

Tsuroerusu · Post by **Tsuroerusu** » Mon Dec 12, 2005 7:37 pm

dann wrote:It's only be about 3 months. He was on the 2nd year show extravaganza!

Yeah, but that was more a party than an interview IMHO, I should add that it was a fun party, so not a waste of time at all

If Marcel has the time, maybe you could take a look at what he said and hoped for last January and see if it came true and what he sees for 2006, that would be insightful, Marcel has been on Call For Help a bunch of times, btw if anyone wanna see the show, I have a few tips

Post by **Patrick** » Mon Dec 12, 2005 10:27 pm

I'm able to connect thru my home network if I use dynamic IP. For static IP I see everything loading ok. Kwifi sees a strong connection. Iwconfig shows the IP address along with all the related settings. Dmesg shows the card funtioning and connected to the network. I can't ping any address or browse the internet. I'm trying this without WAP first and then set it up once I get working. I'll see if I have the same issues on Wednesday at Dan's place.

Post by **Patrick** » Fri Dec 16, 2005 1:08 pm

I have a strange issue. I was trying to enable vesafb during bootup and noticed there were no xorg.conf file in /etc/X11/ so I ran hwd -x to create the xorg.conf file and started up x. It now appears I don't have console sessions via Ctl-Alt-F2, F3, etc..

snarkout · Post by **snarkout** » Fri Dec 16, 2005 5:41 pm

Comment out the nodeadkeys line under your keyboard config and restart X. You might also change xfree86 to xorg in that same section of the config.

Post by **Patrick** » Fri Dec 16, 2005 8:25 pm

Snarkout wrote:Comment out the nodeadkeys line under your keyboard config and restart X. You might also change xfree86 to xorg in that same section of the config.

That did the trick.
Thanks

snarkout · Post by **snarkout** » Fri Dec 16, 2005 9:14 pm

Believe it or not, I beat my head against the wall for nearly two days trying to figure that one out. My google fu was weak or something.

Jza · Post by **Jza** » Sat Dec 17, 2005 8:26 am

Mi few doubts before switching to ark:

Which packages are available (I use some software in my previous distro that wont be easy to install on the new one)?
Where can I see the repositories?
How is the Laptop support?
Does it has XFCE?

Post by **Patrick** » Sat Dec 17, 2005 10:02 am

Jza wrote:Mi few doubts before switching to ark:

Which packages are available (I use some software in my previous distro that wont be easy to install on the new one)?
Where can I see the repositories?
How is the Laptop support?
Does it has XFCE?

First it's Arch Linux not Ark. You can go to the home page to search the packages available in the repositories:
http://www.archlinux.org/

You might have to compile some apps yourself if they're not available. I had to compile several (kdebluetooth, bpconf, sharpmusique, netgo).

So far my laptop is running fairly well with it. I had to compile wlan_ng myself (not very hard) because the version in the repositories didn't have the driver I needed compiled into it. A new version was recently added that might have it now. I have to still setup hibernate/suspend.

Yes there is XFCE. Dan is running it on an older (400 mhz) spare box.

Just remember Arch will require you to do some manual configuring. You should be comfortable using the command line and an editor. They are a bunch of How-To guides on their wiki site for many things.

thelinuxlink.net

Arch Linux on my new laptop

Arch Linux on my new laptop

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