Anyone help a Linux noob with ubuntu wireless networking?

[WelshBloke]

I'm glad you got it working :^)

If you decide to use Ubuntu as a primary O/S, give some serious consideration to using a normal install as opposed to wubi. I haven't used it enough to know if P4man is correct about it hosing installs, but it is a kind of "weird" way to run. I instinctively don't trust it do to the nature of the setup. Setting up a dual boot is easy if you want to keep XP, or if it were me, I'd just wipe XP and run Ubuntu :^D

Have fun with your new O/S. Ubuntu's pretty cool, and it has some nice little touches that make day to day computing nice :^)

Yeah I just assumed Wubi was just like a normal install just without the extra work of burning a disk. Anyway I'll get this going properly before I burn it all and start again. :biggrin:

Expect more hassle when my CD install goes wrong. :twisted:

 

[P4man]

I could very well be mistyping as I have no idea what those commands mean.
I put the files where it said in the instructions but I suppose there could be a problem there. As I said earlier, this is all new territory for me.
I'm not only nor familiar with tab completion, I'd go so far as to say I have no idea what it is, I thought it was something to do with guitars.:hmm:

Tab completion is just that you can use the TAB key in a terminal to complete instructions or filenames or paths without having to type it all, and its something you should use all the time, if for no other reason than it avoids mistyping file names or file paths. Here is a primer:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_line_completion

If wubi is not a good idea is it possible to strip out everything but the WinXP install and start again? Seems a shame as wubi worked really well, I was impressed with that.

Yes, you can just uninstall ubuntu in windows control panel like a windows program, then install from CD or USB by booting off it.

Wubi works.. sometimes for a while.. usually. Its okay if you want to try out ubuntu for a short while or if you have very good reasons not to repartition your drive, but its really not something to use in the long run, its not stable.

Consider how it works; it creates a virtual Ext (linux) file system on top of an NTFS file system. That means its slow (reading or writing a file involves parsing 2 totally different file systems). It also means if something goes wrong with the ntfs filesystem, your ubuntu is hosed too. Hibernating windows and then booting ubuntu is going to cause trouble too (to be fair, also in a native install if you access the windows partition, not a good idea if windows is hibernated)

Biggest problem is witht he bootloader though. Every so often (and its often) an update will break the wubi loader, rendering ubuntu unbootable at best, windows and ubuntu at worst.

Anyway, feel free to experiment with your install now. Chances are you are going to mess up and want to reinstall within a few weeks anyhow, use that opportunity to do a native install. Whatever you do, DO NOT do a distribution update with wubi. That is, upgrade to a new version.

 

[WelshBloke]

I ended up having to do the reinstall a bit sooner than I thought, I updated and something borked my network connection.

Any way I formatted and installed just Ubuntu on the disk, I figure I can run XP in a virtual machine under win7 if I need to (I only had it to play Dungeon keeper)

Install and setting up the network went a lot easier this time now I have a rough idea what I'm doing, so fingers crossed, all should be well.

Thanks to everyone for the help.

 

[lxskllr]

You can run XP in a VM on Ubuntu as far as that goes. Good luck with your new install. It should be a little peppier since it's native now :^)