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Everywhere you try something that doesn't work, always make sure you're using the latest version available! They say this in every manual, but you don't know how many people are violating this rule. But of course, one can say that the version that's delivered with your distribution isn't the latest, but that can't be a problem.

Why am I telling this? Seems logical. OK, it's logical, but most people sometimes forget it. And I'm also telling this again because people who are using (K)UBUNTU and having problems with their wireless networking, can find a clue in this. When you follow the (nice explained!) steps in the Ubuntu Wiki about installing ndiswrapper, you just use the version delivered with that version of your distro. When I did this yesterday at the notebook of a friend, seems I installed version 0.2rc2 wich is very old. Off course I ran into trouble.

=> Read more!

You know my P4 is broken. So now, I'm using the AMD64 notebook from my parents. I allready had Ubuntu running on that, but without WLAN support. I installed vpnc for AMD64 (downloaded the .deb and used dpkg) and attached my computer to the router with a cable connection. Everything was fine, I could use it the way I wanted, no problems, seemed nice. But some things are missing: first of all, I want to use the wireless connection. ndiswrapper isn't an option, because there aren't any 64bit drivers for my WLAN device. It seems that the vendor is waiting for WinXP64bit to release them. Any other bad things: some other software isn't ported to the 64bit platform allready. I don't want to compile all stuff manually, I want to use my computer as soon as possible. So I decided to re-install Ubuntu with the fresh release of Ubuntu Hoary (i386) and give it a try.

The results are pretty good! The installer is very simple, quite fast and after that, you have a complete running system. I needed to install vpnc to access the internet at our student home, but that was no problem. Everything went just fine. The ubuntu website and wiki also provide lots of good information about restricted formats and so on. I really love it. I even love it so much, that I'm thinking about using it on my new laptop instead of Gentoo. The great advantage is that I have a running system with all features in about one hour, vpnc and restricted formats and so on included. With Gentoo, this can take a lot longer. If I need new software: apt-get or synaptic, wait ten seconds, OK. With Gentoo, again, this can take some time. I don't already know what it'll be. Off course, ikke is lobbying for Gentoo ;-)

Even my girlfriend likes Ubuntu! Till now on, she was using SuSE, but she had a few problems with it. She couldn't play DVD's, but now it seems that her hardware (the DVD drive) is broken. There were also some other problems making her think about using another distro. Now, with her final year thesis, she needs to use Corel Draw, and so Windows. So she had to repartition her harddisk and re-install linux (and windows). Because her DVD-drive didn't read the SuSE DVD, she tried Kubuntu. Yeah, she's a real KDE-lover. She loves fisherprice-looking buttons ;-) Kubuntu set up quite quickly, some problems with the wlan (using ndiswrapper instead of the native prism54 driver wich should be working normally), but now everything's fine. She loves it. Now her laptop is making a sound like a cow when starting up. Yes, she's a little bit crazy and I love it! ;-)

With WVS, we gave a LiveCD lesson last week. Not so much people, but others told me they didn't now it on time. The ten persons who were there were quite enthousiast. They loved ubuntu and most of them should try to install it on their computer. I'm sure Ubuntu has a great momentum now and has a great chance to become one of the most popular distro's in the world!

...since my last post on this blog. Lot's happened in meantime: a few parties, LANwars, we've choosen the new boss of our university, I'm selected for an internship developing an L3 multicast switch at Barco. I was quite busy, so I didn't have much time to write some stuff here.

Some bad (or maybe even good) news: my computer is broken. The IDE-connector (or controller) on the mobo doesn't work anymore. It's a quite old Pentium 4 system, one of the first types of Pentium 4, with an Intel D850GB motherboard and 512 MB RD-Ram (Rambus, Rimm,...). So a change would be a new mobo and new Ram. Maybe my parents'll do that to use my computer at home. It was a very good system, running still very good. I'll miss it, and the good configured Gentoo where I had put lots of time in.

But with that sad news, there's also very good news! My parents decided to give me a new system! As mobility is getting more and more important, they bought me a notebook. Now I can use it here in Ghent, at home, and at all other places I'll hang around. For the interested ones: it's a Dell Latitude D810 bought at VTK. Here are some specs:

• Latitude D810, 15.4" WSXGA LCD (1680 X 1050) Screen
• Pentium M 730 (1.6Ghz, 533Mhz, 2MB L2 Cache)
• 1GB 533MHz DDR2 SDRAM Memory (2X512MB)
• 80GB IDE (5400rpm) Hard Drive
• 8X DVD+RW Drive
• ATI X600 videocard with 128MB dedicated ram
• Networkcard and 56k modem
• Intel PRO Wireless 2200 802.11b/g mini PCI card
• Belgisch AZERTY keyboard
• 9 Cell 80WHr LI-ION Primary Battery
• Delux Nylon Carry Case
• System Documentation, Resource CD, adapter
• 3 year "Next Business Day On-site" warranty + Completecare Accidental damage Cover
• home delivery

Just take a look at the price at VTK and compare with the official prices from Dell ;-) It's a huge difference! I like the VTK services!

The Dell Latitude D810
While waiting for my own notebook, I can use another one. It's the Acer AMD64 I allready talked about. Installing vpnc for use at the student home was very simple. But I've added some other, I think bad, repo's and now the whole system is broken. So now, I'm running windows (that other would-be OS in dual boot on this machine). I think I'll study somewhat the next days, so I won't have time to install Gentoo or another Linux distro. I want WLAN working on this machine to use it at home, but there aren't any AMD64 drivers for the IPN2220 card inside. I'll wait, maybe they release them with the release of windows 64bit. My new computer will be, just like my old one, running Gentoo Linux in single boot.

Exams are finished! Yeah, finally! Last one, Advanced Computer Architecture, will be good enough, I think. I just made one big mistake in some assembler code: misread a register and so made the complete exercise (6/20 points) bad. I noticed it just 10 minutes before deadline, so no time enough to restart. The other questions will be OK, I think.

Now the exams are finished, I've some time to install Linux on the notebook at home. It's an Acer Aspire 1522WLMi. Some points I (don't) like:

• Easy partition management
• Excellent localization management: after choosing language, I just had to press OK a few times for country and keyboard selection
• Allmost all hardware good detected, including the 1280x800 screen resolution
• No support for the WLAN device, I'll ask frocksii about his experiences, I thought he did it with the 64-bit beta of ndiswrapper
• After installation, the X-server didn't work. I had to mess up a bit with XF86Conf. Indeed, still XFree, no xorg.
• It was my first experience with gnome since a long time and it seems nicely evolved, I like it
• A few missing icons (as the "show desktop" button, the items in the "computer" menu,...
• I'm automatically logged in with my username.

Let's hope I can get the WLAN working, because now I have to go upstairs for a cabled LAN connection and it's cold there... I'll write more about the progress here.

Lot's of good luck to all people still having exams! Just a few more days and it'll be also time to party for you!