Bugger, back to Mepis

I downloaded and installed 2 newish debian distros. One wrecked my mbr(underground) and quit half way through install the other(debianpure), although a new release had old software and needed too much of an upgrade to install my wireless card. So I am temporarily back to Mepis. I partitioned my hard disk first then put the cd in and installed. On reboot all I had to do to get on my lan was type in my net address change 2 switches and away I went. Much easier than straight debian. No abnormalities compared to kubuntu either and fast. I will be happy with this for a little while.

Ralink RT2500 chipset working but 7202g is crap

I finally realized my RT2500 wasn't working because the ethernet card wasn't disabled and pinched the possibility of connection. So turned it off and my linux is up and running. Very cool. Unfortunately the 7202g router is a piece of crap. I need to send it back to Darren and buy something else I think. But what? The netgear pre n seems the most powerful for the dollar but I would have to buy a modem to go with it. Oh well back to the drawing board.

Ralink RT2500 chipset

When my household went wireless I bought a tcx100 pci card for the server and similar card for my laptop. They have run with a dsl200 modem on an old desktop for years. I decided I needed the security of a router so bought a billion 7202g. I never had a drop out prior to this. Now I have plenty. Bought myself a rt2500 pccard to go wth it as I already have a 3com officeconnect card which just runs, badly. So I decided I wanted to get another 54m card which is guaranteed to work with linux and cheap. After searching the net I found the Ralink RT2500 hardware list which has around 70 manufacturers whose hardware with this chip is working in linux. I bought a Belkin F5D7010v2/3000au which works fine in W2kpro and almost gets to work in Kanotix. Oh well a bit of tweaking coming up. Works fine in windows, almost there in linux. I checked out oztechnologies shop first as he has lots of good deals. I was going to buy another brand from him as it was cheap, a LevelOne but I needed it now, delivery was days away. So I bought it from my local Dick Smith's for less than I could have bought the levelone from ozcableguy's shop. Ozcableguy has an excellent site on networking. There are several communities working on this chipset's drivers. Linux has serialmonkey and ural-linux . BSD has Damien Bergamini's ural driver. RAlink gplled the software so there are 3 lots of drivers for linux, RAlink also has mac drivers, it seems for 9 and 10, as well as intel ixp. Cool.

Kubuntu goes Kanotix arrives

I tried Kubuntu and although it is going to be great, it ain't yet. I have had my computer slow to a halt while using it so I got myself a copy of Kanotix and installed it instead. So far so good. Runs more quickly and seems better integrated. I will find out later if I am right or wrong. Once Kubuntu runs quicker I will most likely go back to it. I see Knoppix is up to version 4 and has incorporated software from other distributions including Kanotix. Maybe I will go back there. Wait and see what the reviewers say as Knoppix is very good.

HVD

Interesting, while blu-ray versus hd-dvd battles on HVD is announced. I bought a red ray dvd burner which I haven't used as the media is too expensive. Maybe one day the cost will come down. Probably when the other 2 first mentioned are released on to the market. Oh well, more money wasted I guess.

Goodbye Mepis, Hello Kubuntu.

I have stopped playing with mepis now and am now trying to use Kubuntu. It is free, now and forever. K/Ubuntu is a community project not a one man show. I think some of the debian guys and gals are part of both distributions so lots of debian expertise seems to be on board which is good for everyone who wants to use a debian distro. OTOH Knoppix is still a cool distribution. If I could have got that to update easily (to unstable) I would have used knoppix. I upgraded my Kubuntu to breezy and lost almost everything. I had to reinstall almost every gui program. It is now starting to look like kubuntu hoary did before I futzed around with it. My move to linux is taking longer than I wished. Some of the programs I use don't have a linux equivalent. I wanted to use wine so I could use my legacy stuff but it seems I may have to buy Win4lin to get compatibility without hassles. But, being a miser I will probably keep on trying to get wine working.