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.

Firefox is getting better, so is Thunderbird.

My webpage which points here I can no longer update. Since then I have changed my full time browser to Firefox. I use an extension with it called Tabbrowser Extensions, which adds more functions for the tabs. There are over a hundred other extensions to add to it giving many more functions but I use other programs instead of having them as part of my browser. If Firefox is used there are seldom bits of malware dropped into the computer. Occasionally I go back to Myie2(released as Maxthon now) if I need to use activex which isn't in Firefox.
Also, the antivirus, anti trojan, anti spyware programs I recommended need to be updated regularly. Adaware has a new program for home users. Spybot is now version 1.3. Spywareblaster is rewritten. A2 free has a new edition. I need to visit the home page regularly to make sure I have the latest program. They all regularly update the malware programs for which they are looking, so to stay reasonably safe I need to hit the update button in each program before I scan for malware. When I find no more updates it is probably because the program has been changed. (If unsure of how to use the programs read the help file.)
Lots of these programs have a switch to turn on auto updating, so turn it on if it exists.
A long time ago I bought a cd burner and got nero version 5 for free. However Nero haven't let me update for free forever. I found a very good freeware program called CDBurner XP Pro. Not quite up to Nero yet but getting closer with each release. I have used it with my dvd burner to back up my hard drive and I regularly burn isos with it. It is very good.
Although I love Pegasus mail I am using Mozilla Thunderbird at present because I am having trouble getting Pegasus to handle spam well enough. I may stay with Thunderbird as it is good enough with Spam but I want to go back to Pegasus. I have been advised to add programs to help Pegasus like mailwasher but I want to run one program for mail not a bunch. So until I can get Pegasus spam handling up to Thunderbird's standard I will use Thunderbird. Years ago the browsers in use were Mosaic and Netscape. I was a Netscape user. It's cool to go back to netscape via Firefox and Thunderbird. Apparently some government body in the USA has recommended that Internet Explorer no longer be used as it's a security risk. Another good reason to go Firefox.

Back to Debian

Well almost. There are a few debian distributions around which are much easier to set up than the original. I saw a review of one called Mepis which was a 2 CD download for the lot. After downloading and burning I found I didn't need the 2nd cd as it allows all the usual debian downloads which is a huge selection of software. Mepis installed almost more easily than Mandrake. I didn't need to do anything with the video or my mousepad and my trackball. On Mandrake I had to search the net and install software to get mousepad and trackball to work, as well as play with xfconfig settings. Looks like I go back to debian. Mandrake isn't any longer as pleasant to use. Although I am a mandrake club member it is a pain to get software. I am updating from debian experimental which might mean crashes, but not so far.