Need Help With New Laptop- Linux

[Guest LilBambi]

Hey! I can answer that!

 

“Friends, yesterday we stood on the edge of the abyss but today we have taken a giant step forward!”

 

That's how.

:hysterical:

[Urmas]

Maybe I install Mint instead of Ubuntu? But then Betty has to completely relearn the desktop.

OK... got Mint 11 installed in VBox. I tweaked the desktop for a couple of minutes -- in essence, "Mint Menu" is the one (and about only) "strange" item.

 

Do you think she'd be OK with this kind of a desktop:

 

1. Applications -- Places -- System (top panel):

 

 

2. Gnome "tree" menu (bottom panel):

 

 

 

[striker]

Thank you guys, I knew there was something , well let's say 'not exactly up to date, about the story I linked to earlier.

The $ sudo apt-get install was the way we always used and never let us down.

 

[V.T. Eric Layton]

I can see where the Broadcom thing is causing the lack of wireless, but the intermittent dropping of the hardwired Ethernet is another issue. If this machine has a good Ethernet card in it, then I would definitely be changing the Ethernet cable out and then possibly changing to another port on the router/modem.

 

Next time that Ethernet fails, Clutter, you should give us the output of Urmie's lspci | grep Ethernet.

[securitybreach]

Good ideas Eric

[Urmas]

... but the intermittent dropping of the hardwired Ethernet is another issue. If this machine has a good Ethernet card in it, then I would definitely be changing the Ethernet cable out and then possibly changing to another port on the router/modem.

Wrong. I mean, a brilliant piece of general advice, but I think I have found the underlying issue (well... more like our earlier suspicions confirmed.)

 

Unless I am mistaken (I am, mostly), Clutter has been testing the new laptop with two live CDs... Ubuntu 10.04.3(?) (kernel: 2.6.32) and Mint 10 (kernel: 2.6.35). Now...

You should use a kernel >= 2.6.36 because the previous drivers weren't made for the chipset (AR8152) [of this laptop.]

http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Asus_1215n

 

Indeed, if you do a search with linux Atheros Communications AR8152 v2.0 Fast Ethernet (rev c1), this seems to be the consensus. We'll see for sure when Clutter fires the lappy up with more recent a live CD.

 

 

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Is he having no wireless or Ethernet issues with the pre-installed Win 7? If all's well there, then I'd have to say that it's the Linux LIVE CDs not liking his hardware.

[Urmas]

Well, he had no issues with Bodhi 1.1 (kernel: 2.6.39), so...

 

Urmas -- threadbot

[Cluttermagnet]

Wow- all the posts have just been great! Thanks, guys.

 

Well, here is Clutter running the Lenovo G570 under Linux Mint 11. I made a CD of the 64bit nocodecs version. It had no trouble finding Ethernet, but then neither did Mint 10. Now we can see eventually whether it still has that nasty tendency to drop Ethernet. Meanwhile, I am going to repeat those 2-3 Terminal queries and see if the box can now find its wireless. I'll report back.

Edited October 27, 2011 by Cluttermagnet

[Cluttermagnet]

Here are the answers to Terminal queries about Ethernet and wireless:

mint@mint ~ $ lspci | grep Ethernet
01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications AR8152 v2.0 Fast Ethernet (rev c1)
mint@mint ~ $ lspci | grep Network
02:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller (rev 01)
mint@mint ~ $

Looks about the same as with Mint 10.

 

Nope- wait a minute- the network one looks different now (slightly).

Here's what I got with Mint 10:

mint@mint ~ $ lspci | grep Network
02:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11b/g LP-PHY (rev 01)

Edited October 27, 2011 by Cluttermagnet

[Cluttermagnet]

I don't like to spoil the fun, however I have read some posts and articles about the Ubuntu 11 being not so good. Here's one example of it - and have a good laugh at it, maybe recognizing something we as linux users have had one time or another :

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/perlow/why-ubunt...with-rage/19103

 

Now, I'm not using it but being an old linux nutcase I'm asking myself: can it really be that bad??? If I had a spare machine I would load it up and see what gives, but alas I haven't one. Anyway, something inside of me whispers 'it can't be that bad', or can it? I just don't believe it. From past experiences I know it takes some thinkering, tweaking and therefore some time to get it up and running, so what?

Isn't that what makes all the fun?

 

I thought I just pass on the link above. Maybe the local Ubuntu gurus can comment on this one, and may be - just may be - it's not the right distro for Clutter to start thinkering with yet on this notebook. But I don't know. I'm too long out of it.

 

I think you are not too far off, striker. Canonical has been making some awfully big changes to Ubuntu. There has indeed been unrest amongst the loyal user base. OTOH if it is possible to banish that awful thing which is really just another lame toolbar, and put a real desktop back on your display, perhaps all is good in the end? I'll give both gnome and KDE a try. And I can't rule out using a lighter weight desktop with Ubuntu 11, though not on this laptop. The G570 has enough muscle to handle a complicated desktop just fine IMO.

 

BTW I appreciate your excellent tutorial on making a Win7 backup. I'm keeping that in mind and will have to choose a method soon. First, I just wanted to make sure this laptop is going to be a viable Linux platform with modern distros and have full capabilities including wireless 'out of box'. Short of that, if it is not too difficult to find and add the appropriate Broadcom drivers, that would suffice. Once I make the keep vs. return decision, I next turn to preserving Win7 in mint condition (pun intended). And I will also take Fran's advice and get a real restore DVD for the laptop from Lenovo. Then the real fun can begin- actually installing Linux on this box.

Edited October 27, 2011 by Cluttermagnet

[Cluttermagnet]

Is he having no wireless or Ethernet issues with the pre-installed Win 7? If all's well there, then I'd have to say that it's the Linux LIVE CDs not liking his hardware.

 

Eric- The following is not in any way directed at you personally, but, to be honest, I now so dislike Windows that I haven't allowed Win7 to even boot once on this box. Muzzled it, I did. Locked it in the basement, I did. I know it's there- it tried to boot when I first powered up the laptop. I throttled it. All I wanted was to get the doggone CD drive open. Later, it tried to boot again, complaining that it had been interrupted during its first boot attempt. I'm sure it is very sincere about wanting to do minor repairs to itself, boot up, and immediately take over my computing experience. I'll have nothing to do with that. It'll get to see daylight on my time and on my terms. So, ultimately, I truly am denying myself the opportunity to use Win7 as a diagnostic tool as I go through my early Linux encounters on this box. And yes, that is ultimately kind of stupid, I admit it- but that is just how I feel.

 

When a new copy of Windows wakes up, it's like a baby. There is a lot of puking and wailing and the baby wants to be taken care of. But it is way less adorable than a human baby, and it's real hard to bond with it- for me, anyway. Linux is ultimately way better behaved and a lot less egocentric. See, if I had a working copy of XP all set up, I'd go 'over there' without hesitation- it's just a tool, however dull a tool. But I haven't the time and patience to baby Windows and let it run me around the primrose path to meet its agenda. Forced registration. Security software. Copious amounts of nagging bloatware. Flaky, control-freak oriented updates. Suspicion, mistrust of the company that wrote the OS software- and on and on. In summary, I'll get to Win7 when I feel like it. It can wait. I haven't the time and patience for it, frankly. I wish I did have an old, trusty copy of XP on here. Then there would be way less emotion or tendency to rant. I'd just go over there and ask it these simple questions and find out if I have hardware issues or not. But I'm not going to waste 5 or 6 hours letting Win7 set up just to find out. And there's that learning curve. I have zero seat time with Win7 so far, ditto for Vista (choke!). I have some limited XP experience. I just haven't got the patience. I'll find harder equivalent ways of doing this, simply out of stubborn pride.

 

One of these days, I'll tell you guys how I really feel about Windows.

Edited October 27, 2011 by Cluttermagnet

[Cluttermagnet]

Wrong. I mean, a brilliant piece of general advice, but I think I have found the underlying issue (well... more like our earlier suspicions confirmed.)

 

Unless I am mistaken (I am, mostly), Clutter has been testing the new laptop with two live CDs... Ubuntu 10.04.3(?) (kernel: 2.6.32) and Mint 10 (kernel: 2.6.35). Now...

 

http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Asus_1215n

 

Indeed, if you do a search with linux Atheros Communications AR8152 v2.0 Fast Ethernet (rev c1), this seems to be the consensus. We'll see for sure when Clutter fires the lappy up with more recent a live CD.

 

 

 

It may turn out that you have nailed it, Urmas. My gut feeling, working with this lappy, is that it's a flaky driver not quite up to the job. Somehow, all along, this has not felt like flaky hardware. Remains too stable for too long before losing Ethernet. Just a 'seat of the pants' hunch, though.

 

You're right about the two distros, including the release number 10.04.03. Ubuntu simply couldn't make Ethernet work. Mint 10 could, for varying hours at a time, but not indefinitely.

Edited October 27, 2011 by Cluttermagnet

[Cluttermagnet]

I can see where the Broadcom thing is causing the lack of wireless, but the intermittent dropping of the hardwired Ethernet is another issue. If this machine has a good Ethernet card in it, then I would definitely be changing the Ethernet cable out and then possibly changing to another port on the router/modem.

 

Next time that Ethernet fails, Clutter, you should give us the output of Urmie's lspci | grep Ethernet.

OK, if it fails I will definitely run that query in Terminal. Also I'm not ruling out a flaky cable or a flaky port on her router. That could indeed cause the symptoms I'm having. OTOH the fact that it grabs Ethernet in one distro but not in another points away from that sort of hardware problem. Or at least seems to.

Edited October 27, 2011 by Cluttermagnet

[Cluttermagnet]

OK... got Mint 11 installed in VBox. I tweaked the desktop for a couple of minutes -- in essence, "Mint Menu" is the one (and about only) "strange" item.

 

Do you think she'd be OK with this kind of a desktop:

 

1. Applications -- Places -- System (top panel):

 

 

2. Gnome "tree" menu (bottom panel):

 

 

 

 

Urmas- Yes, I think that sort of desktop would be close enough for her, fairly intuitive.

 

[securitybreach]

This may help you with your ethernet drivers http://ospa.arvat.org/ethernet-atheros/

 

The compat-wireless package may be in your distro's repos as well, it was in Archlinux's AUR repos.

 

 

 

[Cluttermagnet]

Yes he did but he also mentioned that the wifi was Atheros and I'm not sure it is necessarily. Just alerting the team to a possible Broadcom configuration coming up. I really hope Clutter got Intel or Atheros but.....

 

You and Fran were right, raymac! But maybe it will be fairly painless to acquire that Broadcom wifi driver and get it installed on this laptop?

 

[Cluttermagnet]

Yep, that's what Clutter specifically mentioned, the wired one, not the wifi.

(Clutter, did you have your modem/router secured with a MAC tabel? In that case no other machine will be able to get onto the net except those you clearly enabled in that MAC tabel.)

Well, striker- apparently I do not have such a table, because I have never had any trouble getting any new computer to find internet through that router.

The router setup I left pretty standard, whatever the defaults are. About the only thing I changed was to lock down wifi. The router is not able to do wifi right now- until I go and change that back to the default setting. I am not yet up to testing the wifi in the new laptop, but that is next.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

To each their own, my friend, but believe me... Win 7 is not a very bad experience at all. I wouldn't use it as my primary OS, but it didn't cause me to get warts on my arse or my hair to fall out.

 

 

[Cluttermagnet]

To each their own, my friend, but believe me... Win 7 is not a very bad experience at all. I wouldn't use it as my primary OS, but it didn't cause me to get warts on my arse or my hair to fall out.

I know, Eric. I'm being quite petulant. I can be pretty thick- headed at times. But I just don't have the patience for waking up a mint Windows install right now. That would be, I know, like 5-6 hours of my life gone to hand holding Win7 as it frog- marches me through the winbozo shuffle. When I get a clearer head and a little more patience, I do intend to get Win7 set up on this machine. And make it show up for practices, but otherwise bench it and make it watch me run Ubuntu. OMG the attitude! What's happening to me?

 

I know you're right. It's not that bad a tool. I've got a very bad attitude. :">

I guess it's sort of like that 99ers attitude, I guess.

I'm rooting for 'David', having little patience for 'Goliath'.

 

I'm sorry, I can't help but feel that I've offended you. No offense intended.

At this point in my life, I would have responded the same regardless of who had made the suggestion.

I am massively not interested in working with Windows. I will, from time to time, strictly out of necessity.

 

You know, it's funny- I don't begrudge Linux some under-hood tinkering, even if at times annoying. That's why I'm here, I want to work with Linux OS's. I'm willing to struggle a little with that. But ask me to waste 5-6 hours coddling an OS I don't care to use and I see red. It's all emotional and not at all rational. I recognize that. Allowing a little time for things to settle down, when I have some time I will suffer through Win7 setup and be done with it.

 

Now I'm feeling depressed. I think I'll go wear a pointy hat and sit in a corner- or cook some dinner or whatever...

Edited October 27, 2011 by Cluttermagnet

[Urmas]

To each their own, my friend, but believe me... Win 7 is not a very bad experience at all. I wouldn't use it as my primary OS, but it didn't cause me to get warts on my arse or my hair to fall out.

"To each their own -- The Story of Urmas" :

Here's me, bringing home the bacon, using a Windows 7 workstation (as a humble user, gotta take it "as is"):

 

 

Fortunately there are also penguin workstations available (again, me as a humble user, but I can live with "their" defaults.) Unfortunately there are things that require a Windows puter. And my old hair does not grow back the way it used to. So, when at home-sweet-home, I don't want to have any interaction with Windows.

 

But that's just grumpy old me.

 

P.S.

@Clutter:

This is just speculating, but somehow I find it very hard to believe that you've offended Eric above. Now if you'd called him a twerp... or a twit...

[striker]

 

You should have seen my head... almost nothing left. Time to get me a mat up there...

 

@Clutter: way to go. Just take the route you intended to go with the laptop. Help will always be available on this board.

[Urmas]

Proposed Project -- open issues in flowchart form (version 0.1.0):

 

 

 

 

Urmas -- Unsolicited Consulting Inc.

[Cluttermagnet]

Very funny!

I love your flow chart, Urmas.

 

Well, good news- Mint 11 on this laptop is still going strong with a good Ethernet connection after 9+ hours. Early indications: a late distro (likely) works better(?) BTW I didn't know about wifi minicards. It is comforting to know that, if I can't pummel the Broadcom wifi into submission, I can still don my Aztec priest uniform and pluck its never- beating heart out and offer it up to the gods. Regarding "trick or treat", the correct answer is "treat", of course. Can I please have one extra chocolate bar, Mrs. Neighbor Lady?

 

I fell asleep during my Ethernet longevity exercise. Now I must migrate to my own computer emporium before the natives become restless and make lots of traffic on the highway. I'll check back in later. Thanks, guys...

 

 

mint@mint ~ $ ifconfig
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr b8:70:f4:46:9b:10  
          inet addr:192.168.0.106  Bcast:192.168.0.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::ba70:f4ff:fe46:9b10/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:28330 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:22985 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:1
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:32588622 (32.5 MB)  TX bytes:3389164 (3.3 MB)
          Interrupt:43 

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:16 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:16 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:960 (960.0 B)  TX bytes:960 (960.0 B)

 

P.S. I have wifi locked down OFF on both the laptop and the router at the moment.

There's a front panel switch on the lappy. I will open that can of worms later tonight...

Edited October 27, 2011 by Cluttermagnet

[raymac46]

Clutter - maybe I'm feeling optimistic today (I'm off to visit my 3 yr old grandson later.) But I'm pretty confident that the Broadcom issue won't be too bad. You have a new system, newer card, newer distro and a newer kernel now and hopefully some version of Broadcom's 802.11 STA driver. You won't need that b43-fwcutter stuff if you do. I was able to run a Broadcom wifi card out of the box on my Inspiron Mini 12 with a more recent kernel and that STA driver. Broadcom is better on newer machines.

And I agree with Eric about Windows 7 - it is vastly superior to Vista and pretty solid as well. However I should be grateful to Vista, for without the specter of Vista I should likely never got into Linux in the first place.

However you still have to run all that CPU sucking security software.

[striker]

However you still have to run all that CPU sucking security software.

 

Yep, and that's what takes all the power out of your new laptop.

 

@Urmas: is your flowchart copyrighted/lefted? ROFL, funny stuff!

[Urmas]

My stuff is copylefted -- left(ed) there for grabs. (Dia (FOSS, naturally) is a good piece of software for playing with stuff like this.)

 

 

 

[securitybreach]

Great flow chart Urmie

[Cluttermagnet]

 

Hey- that's a setup! I can spot one a mile away. If you put me in the middle, there is no way I can ever escape the maze and get the cheese. I'd have to climb over walls to get out of there. No fair!

Edited October 28, 2011 by Cluttermagnet

[Cluttermagnet]

I ought to make up my own flow chart to supplement the Urmas version. It would have an additional Decision block. That decision reads

"I am willing to invest 5-6 hours doing all the crap that Windows makes you do during setup, just in order to make proprietary backup disks of Windows"

The two decisions are

YES I cave. I will invest 5-6 hours of my precious time on Windows setup, knowing I will rarely if ever actually use Windows

That advances you to the next process.

 

The other decision

NO No way! I hate Windows. I'm not going to do this right now. I have more important things to do first.

endlessly loops you around, back to the same decision.

 

 

 

Uh, what I'd rather do is to attempt to safeguard the supplied copy of Win7 by imaging that one big partition and storing it on a DVD or two or three. I would use BootitNG for that, for those of you who are familiar with it. The nearly 19G of bloated Win7, loaded with foistware, should be fairly well compressed and compacted by the utility. I'd have to at least shrink that huge 422G partition sda2 prior to imaging- otherwise Bing would later be looking to restore that image to a 422G size partition(?) Then I'd do the rest of the partition work, sliding and expanding the extended partition sda3 and creating root, home, and swap partitions for Linux in the extended partition (see posts #6 and 7 in this thread).

 

I would later also do the Lenovo backup creation method. I'm also assuming that I would/could successfully get a restore DVD out of Lenovo.

 

Does anyone have any idea whether shrinking that huge Windows partition would later cause the Lenovo rescue software living in other partitions (sda1, sda5, sda4) to freak out if I activated Rescue? Or could it be expected to be easy going and just accept that Win7 now lives in a 100G+/- partition rather than 422G? Is it smart enough for that? It lives on that drive so it couldn't very well repartition that same drive.

 

 

Just replacing the hard drive with one for Linux sounds attractive. OTOH I am very reluctant to go inside this lappy. I have zero experience with servicing lappies. What looks more attractive at the moment would be the external drive that someone suggested earlier in this thread. But not to run from, more for storage of backups and such. I don't know for a fact that I can extract the Bing CD in the middle of an imaging session. I assume I can because Bing would be living in RAM at that time(?) Anyway, it would just be a lot easier to let Bing save the image to an external hard drive, instead of having to change out several DVD's during the write. Maybe that's not an option anyway, and I should have Bing on a flash drive so the DVD drive is free for inserting media.

Edited October 28, 2011 by Cluttermagnet