techSunday, January 01, 2006
Tweaking the Gentoo setup on my laptop
I got gentoo linux all setup on my laptop now. I'm running KDE for my desktop environment, Mozilla Firefox for my web browser, Open Office for word processor/spreadsheet/etc; I got wireless networking working (maybe the most difficult part), I got my touchpad working (though it needs some tweaking as it moves very slow while the usb mouse moves normally), I got all sorts of media players installed and the flash player for firefox, sound works, my GUI runs at the LCD's native resolution of 1280x800, I got some True Type fonts installed, everything's up and running beautifully.
The touchpad was simple - I just needed to change one setting in the system BIOS so that linux could detect it (some driver conflict or something)
The wireless networking was not so simple - There are many options when it comes to wireless networking drivers and software. And there are a lot of inconsistencies between different wireless cards. Add to that the increased complexity of wireless configuration options (WEP, WPA, preferred AP's, DHCP, etc) and it's a big mess. In linux, you can not only setup an ad-hoc network, you can setup the computer to act as a regular Access Point, assuming the card supports it, this just adds a bit more complexity.
I had to read two different guides on wireless networking, each with a completely different tool and configuration setup, in order to arrive at some blend of the two that works on my setup. I got it working first from the command line with a few settings in gentoo's distribution specific wireless configuration file. Then I tried to get it to start automatically at boot. It didn't work the first time. Then I couldn't get it working from the command line either. On top of that, after I rebooted to see if it would work automatically, Xorg (very crucial for the GUI) didn't want to run either. So I played around in the wireless config file some more. The GUI thing was puzzling me because I didn't remember making any changes to that configuration. In fact, I discovered, I had changed something the night before and hadn't thought anything of it - I also hadn't rebooted until I went to test the wireless setup, so the change did not manifest itself until the inopportune moment. It turned out to be rather trivial - I had changed the display depth to a value that, as it turns out, is not supported by my card/driver combination (This is worthy of a separate post. I'll probably write it right away, you'll probably have read it by the time you read this.)
So I got the wireless working from the command line again, crossed my fingers, and rebooted. It worked. I'm not sure which of the configuration changes that I made caused it to work - I'll have to play with that a bit more sometime. If I ever have to connect to a WPA network, I'll definitely have to make some changes. WEP works just fine, though the only way that I know of to specify a WEP key is to edit the wireless config file. I'm sure there's some command line way to do it. Yes, there are GUI tools available for that sort of thing, but they would be useless before the GUI is loaded, the setup I got now will be connected as soon as linux gets to the console login (No, I do not have the GUI load automatically at boot, changing this is a trivial matter - one command).
The touchpad was simple - I just needed to change one setting in the system BIOS so that linux could detect it (some driver conflict or something)
The wireless networking was not so simple - There are many options when it comes to wireless networking drivers and software. And there are a lot of inconsistencies between different wireless cards. Add to that the increased complexity of wireless configuration options (WEP, WPA, preferred AP's, DHCP, etc) and it's a big mess. In linux, you can not only setup an ad-hoc network, you can setup the computer to act as a regular Access Point, assuming the card supports it, this just adds a bit more complexity.
I had to read two different guides on wireless networking, each with a completely different tool and configuration setup, in order to arrive at some blend of the two that works on my setup. I got it working first from the command line with a few settings in gentoo's distribution specific wireless configuration file. Then I tried to get it to start automatically at boot. It didn't work the first time. Then I couldn't get it working from the command line either. On top of that, after I rebooted to see if it would work automatically, Xorg (very crucial for the GUI) didn't want to run either. So I played around in the wireless config file some more. The GUI thing was puzzling me because I didn't remember making any changes to that configuration. In fact, I discovered, I had changed something the night before and hadn't thought anything of it - I also hadn't rebooted until I went to test the wireless setup, so the change did not manifest itself until the inopportune moment. It turned out to be rather trivial - I had changed the display depth to a value that, as it turns out, is not supported by my card/driver combination (This is worthy of a separate post. I'll probably write it right away, you'll probably have read it by the time you read this.)
So I got the wireless working from the command line again, crossed my fingers, and rebooted. It worked. I'm not sure which of the configuration changes that I made caused it to work - I'll have to play with that a bit more sometime. If I ever have to connect to a WPA network, I'll definitely have to make some changes. WEP works just fine, though the only way that I know of to specify a WEP key is to edit the wireless config file. I'm sure there's some command line way to do it. Yes, there are GUI tools available for that sort of thing, but they would be useless before the GUI is loaded, the setup I got now will be connected as soon as linux gets to the console login (No, I do not have the GUI load automatically at boot, changing this is a trivial matter - one command).
