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Need I remind the membership of the decades-long clusterfsck resulting from so-called "Win-modems" whose codecs were moved from hardware into host software and to this day remain completely undocumented? Even people who put down hard cash for a WinModem driver found themselves left to twist in the wind when the 3.x kernel series came out (modems may be mostly obsolete, but FAXes aren't (yet)).

Now: Who would like to bet that the WinBattery interface will not significantly extend battery life over what we have now, remain completely undocumented (or trapped behind onerous licensing that forbids Open Source implementations), and leave Linux and *BSD users with systems with significantly shortened battery life because they can't control the power interface?

This is yet another naked attempt to bottle up critical system functionality behind a Microsoft-only wall (because apparently fscking everyone over with UEFI and (In-)Secure Boot wasn't enough).

Pft, 5 years? 12 months? Just over two months here. I'm far enough away from any sort of digital lines that I've got to use a wireless line of sight service, and due to geography, they couldn't get a receiver installed for me until late October. By the end, I was desperate enough to have a second phone line and a Linux box running 24/7 to keep a connection established and fed into my router, which the other computers in the house connected to.

You're right about modems being cheap in the wrong way these days. All the modems I have hanging around here are several years old. Unfortunately, I only have so-called "winmodems", but it's been awfully nice of Dell to ship Linuxant drivers for their Linux laptops, the binary modules of which can be used to replace the pared-down, feature limited ones included in the so-called "open" Linuxant packages.

      --- Mr. DOS

SUSE uses the 2.6.15 kernel, so no native Bcm driver yet (possibly not even the native wifi stack to support it, which is in .16 I think... .17 has the driver). Short of building your own kernel, you have two options: ndiswrapper, or Linuxant Driverloader. ndiswrapper is an OSS kernel module and CLI configuration tool that allows the use of a Windows driver in Linux. Personally, I have not once gotten it to work completely, on any distro, but I have seen it done on other peoples' computers. SUSE ships with a (usually somewhat outdated) version of ndiswrapper. Driverloader, on the other hand, is proprietary software. The licencing cost isn't bad, and there's a trial period to make sure it works, but it's not free. As best I can tell, it does the same thing as ndiswrapper, but it seems to do it better (I once got it to work in FC4, though it would cause a kernel panic in seconds... apparently this is/was a known problem. During those seconds I had connectivity, though.) It uses a web-based GUI on loopback address for configuration. The newer versions of either should, hopefully, support WPA (Driverloader says it does), maybe WPA2.

SUSE uses the 2.6.15 kernel, so no native Bcm driver yet (possibly not even the native wifi stack to support it, which is in .16 I think... .17 has the driver). Short of building your own kernel, you have two options: ndiswrapper, or Linuxant Driverloader. ndiswrapper is an OSS kernel module and CLI configuration tool that allows the use of a Windows driver in Linux. Personally, I have not once gotten it to work completely, on any distro, but I have seen it done on other peoples' computers. SUSE ships with a (usually somewhat outdated) version of ndiswrapper. Driverloader, on the other hand, is proprietary software. The licencing cost isn't bad, and there's a trial period to make sure it works, but it's not free. As best I can tell, it does the same thing as ndiswrapper, but it seems to do it better (I once got it to work in FC4, though it would cause a kernel panic in seconds... apparently this is/was a known problem. During those seconds I had connectivity, though.) It uses a web-based GUI on loopback address for configuration. The newer versions of either should, hopefully, support WPA (Driverloader says it does), maybe WPA2.

Have you tried Linuxant? (http://www.linuxant.com/company/). It is a product you have to pay for but the cost is small and worth it if it help gets your wireless working. There is a 30-day trial period so if it doesn't work you have not lost anything.

"On some systems (Acer notebooks notably), adapter initialization sometimes fails due to IRQ routing problems and interference with the video display. The current workaround is to run "modprobe driverloader" before the X server starts or with the display switched to a text-console (Ctrl-Alt-F1)." -- Linuxant

I'd just like to refute your point about Texas Instruments chipsets. Texas Instruments has had a licensing agreement with Linuxant to support their chipsets with DriverLoader since 09/2004. See the press release about it.

If you have $14.95 to spare, this could be the end of your troubles.

So I ask, why not create code that would allow you to use Windows drivers on Linux?

But Broadcom have clearly GPL'd their drivers:

Their ethernet drivers, but not their wireless drivers.

Fortunately, Linuxant has made their wrapper driver 64-bit compatible, so those of us with HP/Compaq notebooks running 64-bit Linux can use wireless, even though we have to jump through hoops to do so. (I've yet to get around to buying and setting up the driver personally.)

I found out about the whitelist the hard way. Bought an expensive Atheros card, swapped it in, got the BIOS error message, got all the way up to HP's top-tier technicians and they had no idea why that error was there. More research found the reason in the HP Hardware Guide: HP swears the FCC made them do it. Yeah, right, then why don't eMachines/Acer/Dell/etc pull stunts like this...

Other than that glaring fault and their inexplicable choice of the antique GeForce 440 Go GPU, the zv5000z/R3000z series notebooks make great Linux machines and they're very easy to upgrade. See R3000 Forums for more info on the series.

Ok. Video card. You can use the ATI fglrx driver.
Here are the SuSE 9.2 install instructions. Sadly, its not as easy as an NVIDIA card. But you will get hardware 3d and TV out.
http://suse.cbn.net.id/i386/supplementary/X/ATI/su se92/i386/fglrx/8.8.25/

Video capture. Supposedly, you can use the 'Gatos' capture project. This is designed for 2d acceleration, video capture, and several other ATI features. I've never played with it myself, since I've only owned standard radeons, never a AIW.
The site is here:
http://gatos.sourceforge.net/overview.php

But i've been browsing their mailing list, and it doesn't seem like the 9600 is supported. There is a LOT of work being done on it, though, and there are several devel list entries from the beginning of the month.

Sound&Modem, as you already know, will be a breeze.

Your gigabit ethernet card has drivers avaliable from the manufacturers website. This is here: http://www.marvell.com/drivers/driverDisplay.do?dI d=107&pId=10
I'm assuming you meant Yukon, not ukon.
This page here suggests that it is avaliable in the lastest 2.6 kernels (This is Gentoo, not SuSE)
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:3PYpQxdJcwoJ: linuxforums.org/forum/ntopic31345.html+Yukon+SuSE+ 9.2&hl=en&start=16&client=firefox-a
This seems to suggest its in the default install:
http://rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/suse/9.2/i386/lib_mod ules_2.6.8-24.10-bigsmp_kernel_drivers_net_sk98lin _Tree.html
I'm not really sure, as I have little experience with Gigabit ethernet.

The broadcom wireles will present a moderate amount of difficulty, but it can be made to work, and if you are willing to spend a little money, it can be made to work easily. There are no native linux drivers, so you can either use ndiswrapper http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/, which is an opensource project that allows you to use the Windows drivers, or you can use linuxant's Driverloader, avaliable at http://linuxant.com/

The bcm4306 is confirmed supported under both, but I know from experience that driverloader is extremely easy to use, but ndiswrapper is slightly more challenging (still not impossible, but requires editing some configuration files by hand). SuSE has been working on integrating Driverloader into the distribution, but it hasn't happened yet.

Yeah, the floppy, the 7-in-1 usb reader, the DVD drives, etc, will all work without any difficultly. If you intend to use a USB dvd burner in SuSE, you will need to "sudo chmod +u /usr/sbin/cdrdao & sudo chmod +u /usr/sbin/cdrecord" which is a minor security risk. SuSE, for some reason, has redesign those two to not run as root, but it doesn't work properly for USB writers. That simple chmod command will fix that, and then you will be able to burn CD/DVDs under SuSE.

Here, http://lists.suse.com/archive/suse-amd64/2005-Jan/ 0019.html Someone refers to using your motherboard, and it seems to work properly.

BTW: I've been checking the SuSE hardware database, and it seems to have started working, but it is by no means comprehensive. http://hardwaredb.suse.de/index.php?LANG=en_UK Once again

I use SuSe 9.1 (downloaded) on an Inspiron 5160 here at work. Everything worked except the integrated Broadcom wireless (802.11g). I had to perform an unnatural act to get it working.

• article claims all knoppix is german by default. No, there are two flavours of images you can download -EN (English) and -DE (deutsch umm that's german in german to non german speakers :-) ).iso
  
• talks about 3.2 (understandably). 3.6 is out, and it includes kernel 2.6.7, (you have to invoke knoppix26 on the command line) which is pretty close to the latest and greatest.
  
• in 3.6, there are softmodem drivers. Some of them are truly free, others are free versions of linuxant drivers, which are limited to 14.4 kbps (you pay for a license key to run at full speed.) They work (this was on a redhat 8 system, though.)
  

Your idea brings me to my #1 axe to grind with Linux - no support for Binary drivers.

If there was a standard interface for drivers, vendors could be free to distribute drivers for *nix without giving away their "Secret sauce" to the OSS developers.

Alas, Linus is opposed to doing this for philosophical reasons, resulting in the horrible cludges that are available in order to remedy a problem that the kernel guys just don't want to address, but really should.

That's for the Linuxant drivers.

If you want support and easy configuration, try DriverLoader. It's only $20, and it works great on my Dell TrueMobile 1300 card (Broadcom chip).

You'll also need the Windows driver in order to make it work. The ndiswrapper site explains this as well, but just thought I'd bring it up. There's also a commercial driver wrapper at www.linuxant.com, which will also work, and may be a bit easier to install than ndiswrapper.

If ndiswrapper doesn't work, Linuxant's driverloader might. My laptop has an Atheros 802.11a/b integrated card. The madwifi driver didn't work very well with my card (never could get a reliable connection). The ndiswrapper setup let me connect, but was incompatible with encryption on my card. Driverloader worked flawlessly. The downside is that the license is $20 per card (you can also get a 30 day trial license to see if it works better for you than any alternatives).

I haven't used SuSE since 8.0 and I've never used Slack, but, I have to agree that I've had a much easier time with WinModems under Linux than I have with Windows. This machine is running Gentoo (It has been for near 3 years now) and it has a WinModem in it. Windows never ('98, 2k, or XP) could use it right (it would even just crash '98 but that's not hard to do...). I hit this site and the thing has worked better than perfect for a couple years now.

There are a couple of good tools out there that will make most cards work, albeit in a gimpy Windows-esque fashion, without a few advanced features.

Linuxant and Ndiswrapper

It's still better to have actual linux drivers, but these probrams make it possible to use the Windows drivers in many circumstances (You have to pay for Linuxant, and Ndiswrapper works damn near perfectly as far as I can tell, so I recommend it.)

Amazingly, after a few hours of tinkering, I just got onto slashdot using a Broadcom BCM5406 g card. Guess what the first article I read is.

Broadcom won't release drivers or specs for their wireless chipset and prevent any OEMs who use thier chipset from doing so. So there are only really two choices, other than throwing their hardware in the trash, or using Windows, and those are Linuxxant WLAN Driverloader or open source NdisWrapper.

I chose NdisWrapper because it is OS and I did not have to pay for it.

In the future I will simply refuse to purchase any hardware from companies who will not release driver specifications.

They "fixed" it by changing one (1) MODULE_LICENSE() macro, just to ensure tainting. the other submodules still lie about their license although the kernel developers fixed the taint message so that it appears only once.
See the Apr 30th entry in their Changelog.

I disagree. I have been running win2k for a long time and I'm happy with its performance. Hell, I'm writing this post on another machine (linux) that is connected to the internet through the win2k machine using internet connection sharing. I have to reboot every couple of weeks, but the windows machine, through very regular virus scans, adware scans, malware scans, and by changing what services are running to the minimum instead of a bizzare collection of things I would never use, is in good shape I think. Also its behind a router which adds a small amount of protection. I keep it anal retentively up to date, and I have a lot of internet explorer functionality turned off so I don't run into too much flak when surfing. I do wish the operating system didn't take up too many resources, but it is a small price to pay for the benefits of broader software support, and free wireless support. Linux didn't support the wireless card that the computer uses unless I shelled out some money to linuxant so my choice was pretty easy. Also, how else can I play some of my favorite games? Yes the operating system goes through big upheavals, but since everyone uses it, it pays to keep current with the system. That might seem like hypocracy since I'm running win2k but at my work that's what we use, and being more familiar with it helps put bread on the table. If they change to XP or 2k3 I'll do the same upgrade.

$19.95 is the cost (if not more) of a new wireless network card that is already linux supported.

Also, $14.95 is *more* than the cost of a linux supported modem. CRAZY.

Who's buying these licenses? If they were both $4.99 or less, it might makes sense.

So I had a belkin card which was supposed to be based on an orionco chipset; it wasn't and it didn't work. I got a netgear, because that's what they had at comp-usa and I didn't want to waste all my freetime driving around looking for a prism2 chipset where I could be sure it was a prism2.... I got the thing, tried it, didn't work, got a copy of driverloader : done.

I'm three days into the evaulation period and I'm giving them my $20 for the software. It's too easy this way to go the free/annoying route. 'Sides, at the amount of money I end up earning/hour, spending two hours of my life to get a wireless card working it costing me more that $20.

SuSE 9.1? Tell me, how has SuSE improved since 8.2 when it comes to HW support? I remember 8.2 out-of-the-box was a BITCH to get working on SuSE.

A co-worker is a big SuSE fan, and gave me a stack of 9.1 CDs right at the point where I was ready to install Linux on my laptop. It mis-detected my display and I had to reinstall, specifying generic VESA drivers to get it to work. The sound didn't work either, probably another misdetection. I like the look-and-feel of SuSE, and YaST is nice, but I was otherwise unimpressed.

And Fedora Core 2? The one that kills Windows? No thanks.

You're either exaggerating for effect, or were misinformed. There is a bug with 2.6 + grub (SuSE 9.1 and Mandrake 10 exhibit this problem too) where a resized Windows partition will no longer boot (but be otherwise intact). It only happens on some drive geometry/BIOS combinations, and only if you reduce the size of your Windows partition. You can easily fix this with a Windows install disk, or prevent it altogether by using Knoppix or a pre-2.6 distro (or even PartitionMagic, etc) to repartition your disk before installing. It's not a big deal.

Of all the distros I've tried, Fedora is my favorite so far. Then again, I mostly have experience using it as a server, not a desktop.

Why generic display drivers? It's an S3 UniChrome - AFAIK, it's usually well supported under Linux.

I noticed the unichrome project recently. I'll try the drivers there.

The WiFi is Broadcom, could be better, but it can work.

Yeah, some people have got it to work with NDISwrapper + the Windows drivers, though it seems more people have failed than succeeded. It seems that people who tried DriverLoader got it to work, but that's a commercial product.

The flash drive? Probably a 2.6 problem

Yes it is. SuSE 9.0 automatically mounts usb disks. In FC1 I got them to work. There's some conflict with ACPI and usb devices in kernel 2.6.

I'm considering the 3220H1, but I'm not going to run SuSE or FC2, that's for sure.

To each his own. I've never tried a debian-based distro, so that's next for me. Maybe I'll try Mandrake 10 if I'm not happy with Debian. I can always fall back to Fedora as a last resort, because I'm familiar with it and have been happy with it.

Have you tried http://www.linuxant.com/driverloader/?

> touch pad (really, can't tap to click)

This seems to affect older laptops primarily and has been a relatively easy fix for most people. There has been plenty of list traffic about the Synaptic touchpad issues and a quick google will provide instructions if you need to download an RPM to get running. However, for my wife's HP omnibook XE2 which allowed tapping under FC1 but lost that function under default FC2, all I had to do was add psmouse.proto=imps to the kernel options in grub.conf. Some people have had to download a bios update for their buggy laptop bios.

> XFCE4 (incompatible with xorg?)

Hmm. No problems here. I am happy they included it in the distribution; it's fantastic interface for older pcs.

> wlan card (linuxant drivers)

I don't see how it's the Fedora dev team's responsibility to work out your problem here. You bought a card whose vendor doesn't want to support linux. Linuxant is providing a proprietary interface to that card using propietary Windows drivers, charging what I consider a reasonable fee for their efforts. If these were natively-supported wireless chipsets, you may have a case, but in this circumstance I think you should go to the Linxuant user lists, not indict Fedora for reaching "too far".

Anyway, Linuxant has an rpm for the standard Fedora Core 2 kernel included in the distribution. Are you using a custom kernel or are you running with a kernel from a third party repository? If so, did you try the source-based rpm? In Core 2 I have had no issues with the Linuxant driver for a Dell 1300 (broadcom), nor with recent cvs builds from the MadWifi project for Netgear/Atheros-based card.

I think if selinux had been enabled by default, that would have been reaching too far. I lost a lot of hair trying to get my head around selinux while running the release candidates. Otherwise, I think that Core 2 is a fine improvement over Core 1. Everything "feels faster" to me with the 2.6 kernel and I am really enjoying the direction Gnome is going. So are the several Windows users with older PCs who I have helped start running Fedora Core 2 instead of buying a new pc.

Don't forget to add fedora.us to your repository list for extra goodness.

> touch pad (really, can't tap to click)

This seems to affect older laptops primarily and has been a relatively easy fix for most people. There has been plenty of list traffic about the Synaptic touchpad issues and a quick google will provide instructions if you need to download an RPM to get running. However, for my wife's HP omnibook XE2 which allowed tapping under FC1 but lost that function under default FC2, all I had to do was add psmouse.proto=imps to the kernel options in grub.conf. Some people have had to download a bios update for their buggy laptop bios.

> XFCE4 (incompatible with xorg?)

Hmm. No problems here. I am happy they included it in the distribution; it's fantastic interface for older pcs.

> wlan card (linuxant drivers)

I don't see how it's the Fedora dev team's responsibility to work out your problem here. You bought a card whose vendor doesn't want to support linux. Linuxant is providing a proprietary interface to that card using propietary Windows drivers, charging what I consider a reasonable fee for their efforts. If these were natively-supported wireless chipsets, you may have a case, but in this circumstance I think you should go to the Linxuant user lists, not indict Fedora for reaching "too far".

Anyway, Linuxant has an rpm for the standard Fedora Core 2 kernel included in the distribution. Are you using a custom kernel or are you running with a kernel from a third party repository? If so, did you try the source-based rpm? In Core 2 I have had no issues with the Linuxant driver for a Dell 1300 (broadcom), nor with recent cvs builds from the MadWifi project for Netgear/Atheros-based card.

I think if selinux had been enabled by default, that would have been reaching too far. I lost a lot of hair trying to get my head around selinux while running the release candidates. Otherwise, I think that Core 2 is a fine improvement over Core 1. Everything "feels faster" to me with the 2.6 kernel and I am really enjoying the direction Gnome is going. So are the several Windows users with older PCs who I have helped start running Fedora Core 2 instead of buying a new pc.

Don't forget to add fedora.us to your repository list for extra goodness.

From the things I could not get to work (that used to work): touch pad (really, can't tap to click),

XFCE4 (incompatible with xorg?)

wlan card (linuxant drivers).

Both ndiswrapper (free and Free) and DriverLoader (commercial and proprietary) work on FC2. DL is more stable, though (ndiswrapper had a few occasional crashes every now and then, DL works flawlessly for me)

You're ignoring the fact that those people working for free can work for free only for so long until they start needing to make money to eat again.

Then they will start charging money.

In fact, we're seeing the start of this in the Linux world. Sun's Java Desktop System? That costs, what, $99? Staroffice? Costs money too ($75, IIRC). Linuxant's Driverloader (run Windows drivers on Linux)? $20.

Remember the late-90s, when narly all information on the 'net was free? Now you have to wade through pages of ads or pay a small monthly fee to access many sites (consider even Slashdot has implemented a subscription plan, because they realized they couldn't just run this site for free forever!).

Nobody can work for free forever, and the free-market will react to this fact accordingly.

Thus, your work-for-free roofers will, sooner or later, realize they're conning themselves and will start charging a fee. Let the market work its magic.

Linuxant has added a note about this issue to their site, with a link to their response on the Linux kernel mailing list.

From the license:

7. Performance. V.92 modems are designed to be capable of receiving data at up to 56Kbps with compatible phone line and server equipment, and transmitting data at up to 31.2Kbps. V.90 modems are designed to be capable of receiving data at up to 56 Kbps from a compatible service provider and transmitting data at up to about 28.8 Kbps. Public networks currently limit download speeds to about 53Kbps. The free version of the drivers is limited to 14.4Kbps. Actual speeds vary and are often less than the maximum possible.

I mean, even RFC 1149 (TCP/IP over Carrier Pigeon) would be better :-)

This is crippleware.

By the way, I had reasonably good luck getting my (G520) D-Link wireless working under Debian (w/ the 2.6.5 kernel) with the driver emulation package from LinuxAnt called DriverLoader. Commercial, sadly, but between that and madwifi (no Super G, etc etc)... Anyway, I _think_ it works for the PC Card as well.

Not perfect, and I had trouble until I went to the 2.6.5 kernel, but it does work (I was playing CounterStrike on it last night with a 20 ping). :)

I've never tried 2K with anything that has 16-bit PCMCIA slots. 98SE in 48Mb is quite slow, 2K would be just evil I imagine!

Linux wireless support is, sadly, not very complete yet. The main reason for this is the fact that most of the chipset manufacturers are either unwilling to make Linux drivers, or unwilling to release their hardware specs. Have a look at this website though, the software here provides a wrapper for NDIS2 drivers:

It's the fault of the Broadcom chip they started putting in them. Which is Linksys's fault for switching to a chip that has drivers closed tighter then a virgin's legs. The wrapper provided by Linuxant can use the Windows drivers. Also the Prism GT people are working on other chipsets at a better price.

• a free version (limited to 14.4Kbps data), available at no cost. Please use it to test if your hardware is compatible.
• a full version (with 56K and FAX), available for a modest price.

Wireless libraries? what wireless libraries? Wireless support is at the kernel level, the only user-space tool you might need is iwconfig which is included in every semi-recent distro. As for the config file, I strongly suspect you are making that up as well.

Unfortunately, your information is out of date in a bad way. About three months ago, I went to buy a wireless PCMCIA card for my laptop. I bought three of them, each with different chipsets, each entirely unsupported under Linux. After learning my lesson, I paid careful attention to the model numbers, and checked out each and every consumer-grade card from Best Buy, Circuit City, Amazon, CompUSA, and a couple of local retailers. Not a single one of them had cards with Linux drivers.

I found a couple of Cisco Aeronets (used) online, which have drivers, but they were massively more expensive then anything else, and the average consumer won't be able to find them.

The landscape is shifting rapidly, but AFAIK it's still wild luck if you walk into a store and buy a wireless card with any sort of Linux support. All of those cards are off the market now.

I finally ended up going with LinuxAnt's DriverLoader because I figured finding a new Linux-capable wireless card was hopeless. Wireless support for Linux is an absolute disaster zone, and the vendors are well and truly to blame here; I've heard their excuses and they don't ring true. (If you're so worried about FCC signal strength regulations, lock the relevant strengths out at the hardware level; software is always hackable and if you're worried about being liable for Linux drivers, you're equally liable for hacked Windows drivers...)

Intel has been saying they will release a Linux driver "anytime now". In the meantime, for $19.95, you can purchase Linuxant which uses the native MS Windows driver under Linux. It works great and supports your centrino.

Actually I just got my NEW Linksys 802.11g PCMCIA Card working with linux using linuxant.com's Driver Loader.

No I do not work for the company or know anybody who does. I found mention of this while googling for Linux Wireless drivers... running across
Rasmus Lerdorf's site with screenshots and a brief explaination of what he did to configure it.

I was amazed at how easy it was to configure [unzip, run, configure through a web interface.]

$20 gets you an permanent license to use their software -- otherwise you get a month of use for free to make sure the card works.

It's a pretty neat idea -- they use the WindowsXP drivers through a compatibility layer.

So for me, using Debian unstable[sid], I'm finally able to run wireless linux on my Thinkpad :)

""Linux in currently unable to take advantage of Centrino's wireless networking devices, without, that is, prying $20 from your thin wallet to buy Linuxant's DriverLoader"

Not true. I'm using the open-source ndiswrapper project together with the win32 drivers, and it works, although a bit buggy. See here"

I see. I hadnt noticed that there was a free driver. But the ndiswrapper is still the same as the Linuxant's DriverLoader solution with the exception that you dont have to pay. Its still not a native linux driver, it relies on a windows DLL, and as many people have commented, its not entirely stable.

(typing this on a Centrino-based WinXP laptop)

Indeed.

However, when I decided to purchase a decent wireless card , I would've liked to have been able to use it under Linux without paying extra. When you spend nearly UKP50 on the card, a discount on the Linuxant driver (at the very least!) would have been a nice gesture.

knoppix is going to be slow on that unless you repartion a drive to use swap space. Knoppix is cool enough to find an existing linux swap space, and use it (This may be a problem for some people doing recovery, because it is reading/writing to the hard drive). Try loading knoppix in text mode first: that's much easier on the memory requirements. Once you do get X working, don't use KDE; try a lighter window manager & desktop.

as for your wireless, you'll need to load some special drivers, which won't play nice with a live-cd unless you customize it yourself. It won't be perfect, but its a start.

I've never played with your sort of watch, but I imagine knoppix will treat it just like any other USB thumbdrive. The newer versions will automatically detect attached storage devices and mount them (/mnt/sda# I think).

I have no clue what to do about your pcmcia cdrom drive. Try doing a PXE boot from a network drive to do a hard drive install if you can't boot of your cd-rom. That'll get you going, but I have no experiance with a pcmcia drive. Linux is pretty good about supporting older technology, its the newer stuff it is slow with. Recompiling a custom kernel is extremely easy with 2.6, so you may want to wait for knoppix to release a 2.6 kernel version to tweak your hardware.

The biggest problem I've had is with ACPI - the spec varies from manufacturer to manufacturer. I wouldn't even bother with it on a 2.4 box; you'd be asking for trouble. ACPI and powermanagment (cpufreq is awesome) are much better in 2.6.

Linux on Laptops will give you a great start on fine tuning or getting a distro installed.

Good luck.

The TrueMobile 1300 is a broadcom chipset, and there isn't a native driver. However, check out linuxant.com. Maybe not the most ideal solution, but it will get your card up and purring happily. Both SuSE and mandrake are excellent user-friendly distros. There is a yahoo group linux-dell-laptops which you should check out. You'll get a lot of good information to help you out there.

Sadly Broadcom 802.11g cards are not supported officially in linux.

However, check out Linuxant's Driverloader It loads the Windows driver and allows it to drive the wifi card in linux.

In fact I'm using it right now - great stuff. Although I don't know how you would be able to integrate it into a Knoppix CD

I've had the same problem with D-Link, and it really pisses me off. Both with the Broadcom based PNA2.0 adapters and their asx100 based wifi adapters.

I wonder how well DriverLoader will work with this.

I'd thought the reason for Broadcoms complete lack of a Free driver (you can use linuxants ndis driver loader with the windows drivers) for their wlan cards is that their cards are in fact general purpose radio transmitter/receivers, and with an open driver these features could be exposed and used which would prevent them selling the same hardware with different drivers for other applications. Of course this could be completely wrong!

Broadcom should release specs for their chipset, or code for their drivers, and then i'll take them a little more seriously (since Atheros chipset cards do work under linux). right now the only way i can use my linksys 802.11g card is with linuxant's windows driver wrapper software, and linksys emailed me saying they do not plan on releasing drivers for this card (WMP54G.)

Linuxant explains why they're charing money for their drivers here: https://www.linuxant.com/store/faq.php