Ubuntu, can second computer provide lan from its wireless connection for good install?
October 1, 2011 - 1:49am
No lan here to do a proper install of ubuntu. It is necessary to connect to the net to download the drivers for the usb wireless thing. (Netgear). so is there a way to use another wireless laptop as the gateway to the net? Then it could detect the netgear usb thing and download its drivers through the other laptop. This must be a common problem but it does not seem to be addressed with good explanation. If it was simplified, anyone could install ubuntu in any internet cafe without a lan connection as long as they had working net on one computer.
Thanks, hope my telling of the problem was not too painful and was understandable.
Brian
Have you tried Ubuntu 11.whatever on a stick? Sounds really cool to me.
Do you have a CD/DVD drive? The first thing that usually happens in that kind of install is setting up the network. That said, I always do my installs through a wire, and I am not a big fan of wireless generally.
Check to make sure that your hardware actually has a driver.
http://linux-wless.passys.nl/query_part.php?brandname=Netgear
I agree with Smith on this one. On a fresh install get it working "wired" first and then do the wifi card.
I think all of the wifi cards now work with GNU/Linux. There are all kinds of brand names but they pretty much all use a very small number of chipsets.
Anything using an Atheros chipset has been very well supported for a long time and should work "out of the box". The last "holdout" was Broadcom. They were a bit late getting with the programme and so you may need to play a bit to get it working if you're on a somewhat older distro version.
Speaking of installs, I am sure you have heard about the possibility of motherboards being locked to prevent malware, a move that may also prevent installation of any system other than what it is shipped with.
http://www.overclockers.com/windows-8-pcs-lock-linux/
Yes I've heard about this...more evil from the evil empire.
A lot of folks dual boot Windows and GNU/Linux. Usually they use GNU/Linux as the primary operating system (particularly for anything that involves connecting to the net) but also have Windows for the odd application where there isn't yet a viable free software alternative.
If what they're saying is true, OEM PC hardware is going to be locked at the firmware level making it impossible for you to use a non Microsoft operating system. It's nasty stuff but then again Microsoft has always been nasty in enforcing its monopoly on PC hardware.
Brian, I did a little looking around and it seems that there isn't that much of a problem with cards that use 802.11g chipsets but there is a problem with those that use 802.11n chipsets...again those that use Atheros chipsets seem to work best "out of the box".
With others, you're having to install ndiswrapper and fooling the card into thinking that it's running on Windows.
If you go to a command line and run "lspci" you should be able to figure out what chipset the thing is using...the chipset info is more important than the brand name.
Whenever I'm computer hardware shopping I usually try to check online ahead of time to see whether the device has any of those "Windows only" gotchas. If it does, I don't buy it and let the person in the store know why I'm not buying it in the hope that it'll filter up the chain. Believe it or not, I've found at least one GNU/Linux savvy salesperson in a local Staples outlet and because of that, I'm a return customer to that particular outlet.
Thanks for the help. I was just hoping I would not have to lug the big piece of old crap to my (wired) place. They do not have wired, they get the signal from the landlord and don't want to intrude with the computer too. If a laptop would work to share or provide the net to the old desktop, then I would not need to move the damn thing.
By the way, the back to school computers seem pretty cheap. Is it time for me to upgrade? I want something that will take linux in a dual boot so stuff upthread is a bit scarey. Better grab it now before I have to deal with the new microsoft win 8 evil.
Thanks again
Brian
OK, I get it now. You're trying to use the wired notebook as a sort of proxy server/gateway for the desktop you're trying to set up. So, I guess you have to share the "wired" connection on your notebook and then on the desktop you're trying to set up, point it at the IP address of the notebook to get access to the net.
Must confess that it's been years since I've done this...did stuff like this back in the days of dialup.
This article will probably point you in the direction you want to go.
Actually all I need to do is download the correct bunch of linux drivers or rpm files or deb files onto a usb stick, stick it into the computer and install them. But the linux people do not seem to have thought to make it easy to do this.
I mean, what mug in ubuntu wouldn't think to have a bunch of wireless driver software ready to go for download to get wireless connections working? Not everyone has a broadband cable ready to go. Not every cafe has it either. If the linux people do not stick this stuff on their basic start CD they greatly damage their "penetration rates" into windows land. It is probably less than one megabyte in a deb file!
It is so stupid to have to bring the old shitbox to another location just to get the usb wireless connection working. It is plug an play in every working (connected to the net) linux system I have tried it in. But if you are not connected to the net in the first place, you might as well smash it under your feet. (by the way, the old shitbox zooms along under linux. but absolutely useless in its current condition). It has a thousand megs of ram as opposed to about 350 in my machine.
Brian, it's because Ubuntu follows the Debian GNU/Linux policy of not including proprietary device drivers in the base install. It's similar to not installing proprietary audio and video codecs in the "out of the box" install. You have to install them after you have the system up and running on the net.
https://help.ubuntu.com/11.04/installation-guide/hppa/hardware-firmware.html
If you want a distro that does include proprietary drivers and codecs in the base install then I'd suggest using a distro like "Linux Mint".
Thanks, it worked out ok. GF laptop is getting slow, so she gives it to son, she buys new cheap laptop (Hp amd stuff really cheap right now) and gives me her sons big old desktop to get it out of the way. (It took up a whole table). I put the ram from it in mine to jump from 350megs to 1350 and then I put the thing in cold storage till mine dies. (Son is teen so slow linux computer should keep him out of trouble to some extent.) I can use his as a guinea pig to find a tight fast linux for old laptops! Amazing what a little extra ram will do for me. I will try to keep my old sony vegas video editing software alive a while longer on xp too.
Brian
Hey Brian I just updated my Dell Mini from 8.04 LTS to 10.04 Netbook remix. It was a flawless installation.
The thing that took longest was actually hardware related...being able to hit the F12 key in time to change the boot order to USB thumb drive! The machine was booting too quickly ;)
I created the installation USB drive using "Unetbootin" on my Ubuntu Studio desktop machine. It took all of a few minutes.
Once I booted the installation thumb drive (there's no CD or DVD drive on my netbook), the install took maybe 30 minutes. It recognized my Broadcom wifi chip (it was a common one) and offered to download and install the wifi driver...that took all of 30 seconds. Then of course there were the updates to do...and that took just 15 minutes. So...a complete upgrade and fully functional system in about an hour.
Well done, and thanks for the details. Are you using "unity" or lxde or "classic ubuntu desktop" or something else" I almost sold my computer because unity slowed it down so much. I didn't realize there was different desktop options. Now with the extra ram, I can use classic or lxde but unity is not a place I ever want to go. And it was designed for NETBOOKS! The ubuntu devellopers must be crazy. There should be a warning before anybody upgrades to that. "Buy more ram or it will not work!"
I have a first generation acer1 with limpus on it no harddrive or cd etc and it needs to be upgraded. Limpus is fedora based. It is kinda strange. Microsoft bought out the netbook companys (or brought them into the happy microsoft family) a few years ago. (So they had to have harddrives, etc and I guess they had to stop sending out software updates for their linux netbooks). Anyway it still works but its firefox no longer does what it needs to do. So I tried to upgrade. No rpm versions of firefox anywhere! (Well there is one but it has "dependency issues") "Missing blah blah blah" and it refuses to install. But Opera DOES have rpm versions and they install like a charm. I do alt f2 and type in opera and run it. Wiorks great. Anothe weird thing. The webcam wasnt working good at all at first to make videos but a software update a few years ago meant that it did pretty good video. (But it didn't tell me that it was now doing mpg video instead of ogg and that sound was now working really well!) Anyway way back then I downloaded skype but never used it because I have no friends on it. So last week, I tried it with my brother and it worked great. On a crappy little netbook with no harddrive than hasn't had software updates in a couple of years! Very good including the webcam. I also found a good webcam for linux on my desktop, it is Facecam 2000 which was on for 19.99 in london drugs. I hurt my back and couldnt work for a couple of weeks, Connected with family on skype, saw my niece (11) in real time for the first time ever, and got the facecam to do digital video from my microscope (In LINUX)!. The facecam also worked straight away with my olde netbook. The link is to an "instructable" about how to do the microscope video in linux.
http://www.instructables.com/id/Using-a-cheap-webcam-with-a-microscope-t...
That trick with the webcam and the microscope looks cool!
The Ubuntu Netbook Remix 10.04 uses the Unity desktop...although now I understand Ubuntu has by default replaced the Gnome desktop with Unity on the main version.
Anyway, Ubuntu Netbook Remix found my built in webcam "out of the box" in the initial install...didn't have to muck with device drivers at all...it just worked.
Alot of long time GNU/Linux users can't stand the Unity desktop...but...Michelle was using my machine today and she said that she liked it. So I guess, Canonical is targetting the Unity desktop at newbies and not at us "old timers". I'm on Ubuntu Studio Edition 10.10 on my main desktop which is using Gnome 2.x and I understand the current version of Ubuntu Studio still runs the Gnome desktop instead of Unity.
I'm running Linux Mint Gnome edition on my (starting to age) IBM Thinkpad P4 notebook.
On the various "buntu's" and of course Linux Mint because it's a derivative, you can install PPA repositories for alot of software. Not sure if there's anything equivalent to PPA's in Fedora.
Linux Mint also has a "Debian Edition"...which draws from the Debian repos instead of Ubuntu. LMDE has both Gnome and XFCE versions...the XFCE version might work on your Acer Aspire netbook. What's different with LMDE is that it's a "rolling release"...you never really have to do a re-install when it hits the unsupported stage. It just permanently updates all of the packages to the latest version forever. Mind you, because it does that you're more likely to run into software conflicts here and there and so it's a bit rough around the edges. In otherwords, best used by folks with a bit of GNU/Linux experience and not complete newbies.