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Old 03-09-2007, 01:57 PM   #1
jddphd
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Default I tried...

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I bought a new machine and I decided to try to load Linux on it.

I downloaded Ubuntu. Burned an ISO. So far so good.

I'm not a total newbie - I understand the general principles, and I've built many a box for myself over the last 10 or so years, but I've never done Linux.

So I created my partitions and went for it. Ubuntu installed pretty easily I must say.

But my wireless card - which, according to the company had a Linux driver - didn't work.

So I did what anyone else would do - started googling, hit the ubuntu forums. I came across many an idea. I came across a couple of guys trying to build drivers. I tried a bunch of these ideas. I was in the terminal too, on the command line. (for the record I write a lot of php and sql, so I'm not unfamiliar with the command line).

Three hours later I'm no closer (at least it doesn't feel that way) than I started. And the only thought going through my head was that this is what it's going to be like when i get stuck.

I had to stop. I can't sink time into it like this.

Believe me, I'm not against Linux at all, and I don't want to start a holy war about it. I really wanted to use it. It's just that there's a huge learning curve, whether it's real or perhaps even my own perception. My world doesn't require a whole lot of complexity, and to be honest I've got everything working quite nicely in XP. It never crashes on me and I'm highly productive in it. (Of course I'm not saying it's perfect either. Lord knows I'm not trying Vista for a long time.)

Good luck to you all. I'll keep tabs on how things are going here because I'm still interested. But I've got to go back...
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Old 03-09-2007, 02:26 PM   #2
rivviepop
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Might I ask if you did the small research before taking the plunge with your wireless card? Due to the manufacturers *not* releasing specs on the card chipsets, the linux world is having to reverse engineer them. It's getting better every day, but it's a fact that wireless is a bit of a pain. You're better off going and buying a "good" card (one everyone knows that works) rather than wasting time -- leave that to the hackers, and in a year they'll have it working.

I'm sorry you had such a bad experience -- but there are a *lot* that go the other way. I can't speak for Ubuntu, but if you grab an off-the-shelf ThinkPad T43 and install Fedora Core on it, everything just works right out of the box - except wireless, but a single one-file download is all you need to enable it. As do many other systems I run (primarily Dell hardware), everything just works -- mainly because I've spent the time making sure the hardware is friendly with my chosen platform.

Maybe you'll try again some other day and have better luck. This BB device is the first piece of hardware I've actually had to spend time on to get working with linux in a really long time, and it's primarily because of how RIM had designed it and not released specs. Go figure. A lot of companies are stuck in the dark ages and don't realize yet that supporting linux as a platform actually helps their bottom line in roundabout ways.
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Old 03-09-2007, 03:18 PM   #3
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Wireless is a pain in Ubuntu.
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Old 03-09-2007, 03:54 PM   #4
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Wireless has long been a thorn in Linux's side... That along with the masses having sound issues... Both can be easily resolved with a little time and effort.. PM me the info no your card and we will get it working... I do not want to use this area for no BB related issues as we might loose it....

PM me and we will git-er-dun
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Old 03-09-2007, 04:19 PM   #5
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jddphd
IBelieve me, I'm not against Linux at all, and I don't want to start a holy war about it. I really wanted to use it. It's just that there's a huge learning curve
Yes Linux / Unix does have a learning curve but think of the advantages!

--No need for Anti-Virus (unless it's being used as a mail server of course)
--No real need for a firewall
--No need for anti-spyware
--No need for a defragmenter

These can easily add up to a few hundered a year in subscription fees NOT to mention the cost of upgrading the OS, which, in Linux / Unix is free
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Old 03-09-2007, 09:41 PM   #6
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Appreciate the offer. I might take you up on it again soon. I did try to do a little background research. The Edimax card (7128g) I had was listed as having a Linux driver. In fact I spent several hours looking into a number of things. I found a good site to guide me as well.

Ubuntu Linux Resources

I'm telling you the install went great, but the learning curve was prohibitive. I have such little free time these days with an 11 month old baby. For better or worse I know my way around the Windows environment.

As for those expenses you list, well... I can do just fine with Zone Alarm, AVG, the crappy old Windows defrag, and Ad Aware. Not much money spent there!
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Old 03-10-2007, 11:16 AM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jddphd
I'm telling you the install went great, but the learning curve was prohibitive. I have such little free time these days with an 11 month old baby. For better or worse I know my way around the Windows environment.
Hey these things are just tools -- what a lot of rabid zealots (not talking about anyone here) forget is that at the end of the day, if a tool doesn't work for you - find another one (or stick with your working one). I have many times told people "just get a Mac" because that's the tool that they need, not to learn Linux or Windows. You're a busy guy with a new baby and your Windows works - just stick with it.

We'd be happy if you even went and bought a Mac and ditched Windows. hee...
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Old 03-10-2007, 03:17 PM   #8
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Default what card do you have ?

not sure what exactly this is doing on the blackberry forums. I'm pretty sure you'd have better luck on say the ubuntu forums....
I personally am prowling around here for a solution on syncing my blackberry 8700c with kontact (kaddressbook) to be exact. I would use barry but unfortunately there is no easy to use LDIF to kmail importer....
Anyhow back to your quesiton, what card do you have ? do an "lspci" to find out. paste the answer here and I'll tell you how to get it working... you could probably just use the latest ndiswrapper, but if you say it has support you should probably use the standard driver.
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Old 03-10-2007, 07:38 PM   #9
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Quote:
Originally Posted by kaaspad
I personally am prowling around here for a solution on syncing my blackberry 8700c with kontact (kaddressbook) to be exact. I would use barry but unfortunately there is no easy to use LDIF to kmail importer....
Since we're already way off topic (heh), have you tried using the longer way of exporting a LDIF file with Barry, importing it to Thunderbird, then exporting it from ThunderBird as a CSV file, then importing it to KAB? Not being a KDE user I've not tried this, but it sounds generally painless enough.

I wrote a small PHP exporter for work, the basic field mappings (for barry) you can start with are below; note my code is converting from 'standard' organizationalPerson schema into the slighty altered attribute names that Mozilla likes.

I chopped out all the logic, so basically you see that mozilla map is on the left, LDIF on the right being pulled out of $people_info array.

Code:
        $raw = "dn: cn=".$people_info[0]["cn"][0];
        $raw .= "\nobjectclass: top\n";
        $raw .= "objectclass: person\n";
        $raw .= "objectclass: organizationalPerson\n";
        $raw .= "objectclass: inetOrgPerson\n";
        $raw .= "objectclass: mozillaAbPersonAlpha\n";
        $raw .= "modifytimestamp: 0Z\n";
        $raw .= "givenName: ".$people_info[0]["givenname"][0]."\n";
        $raw .= "sn: ".$people_info[0]["sn"][0]."\n";
        $raw .= "cn: ".$people_info[0]["cn"][0]."\n";
        $raw .= "mail: ".$people_info[0]["mail"][0]."\n";
        $raw .= "telephoneNumber: ".$people_info[0]["telephonenumber"][0]."\n";
        $raw .= "homePhone: ".$people_info[0]["homephone"][0]."\n";
        $raw .= "mobile: ".$people_info[0]["mobile"][0]."\n";
        $raw .= "homeStreet: ".$people_info[0]["street"][0]."\n";
        $raw .= "mozillaHomeLocalityName: ".$people_info[0]["l"][0]."\n";
        $raw .= "mozillaHomeState: ".$people_info[0]["st"][0]."\n";
        $raw .= "mozillaHomePostalCode: ".$people_info[0]["postalcode"][0]."\n";
        $raw .= "title: ".$people_info[0]["title"][0]."\n";
        $raw .= "company: ".$people_info[0]["o"][0]."\n";
        $raw .= "mozillaHomeUrl: ".$people_info[0]["labeleduri"][0]."\n";
        $raw .= "description: ".$people_info[0]["description"][0]."\n";
So if you used the 0.6+ LDIF mappings of barry, you could create an export format (one time template) that would import into TBird flawlessly, then use that to generate a CSV file.

Just an idea -- smells like you could shellscript all of it though. Mmmm, I love the smell of bash-fu in the morning...
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Old 03-12-2007, 05:45 PM   #10
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rivviepop
Hey these things are just tools -- what a lot of rabid zealots (not talking about anyone here) forget is that at the end of the day, if a tool doesn't work for you - find another one (or stick with your working one). I have many times told people "just get a Mac" because that's the tool that they need, not to learn Linux or Windows. You're a busy guy with a new baby and your Windows works - just stick with it.

We'd be happy if you even went and bought a Mac and ditched Windows. hee...
Well said rivviepop!
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