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In usual form, I’m putting off writing my English paper that is due tomorrow and testing out the latest version of Ubuntu (5.10) which just happens to have been released today. I used Ubuntu 5.04 for a while, and although it was impressive, I had a continuing issue with hardlocks under heavy network+cpu load. My Netgear 802.11g card, the wg311v2, is only slighty more stable under Windows, and although it doesn’t fully lock the machine, it often irreversably loses connectivity.

Texas Instruments, who make (made) the wireless chip (ACX111), seem to have completely abandoned the product. Good decision on their part, since it’s a rancid, steaming, worthless pile of transistors, and probably has a cocaine habit and at least one STD. People like me who actually bought, and still own, the product are completely screwed. Great job folks. I could design a better chip with no arms and a team of trained dolphins.

Yet another problem with my network card is the support (or lack thereof) in Linux. TI evidently closely guards any documentation of the ACX111 as a ‘trade secret’. I’m half guessing they either never bothered to actually develop documentation, or are too embarrassed to release it. Regardless, Ubuntu impressed me by actually detecting the card, and installing the correct (albeit too old) driver for it as well. Although the driver cannot actually get the card to work, the fact that Ubuntu even saw the thing bodes well for their hardware support. Every other piece of hardware in my computer was detected flawlessly. Ubuntu definitely has their shit together detection wise.

Upon initial bootup, Ubuntu proceeded to quickly install and set up the packages it had previously copied to the harddrive. The process was quick and painless, and when it finished, I was greeted by a clean and functional gdm skin. Videocard and monitor detection were perfect, and I did not have to make a single change to xorg.conf (scrollwheels are enabled by default too, which is pretty nifty). I’m not a fan of the brown colorscheme of Ubuntu, but changing everything to blue was quite easy. My initial impressions of speed are excellent. Everything is fast and responsive. Stability is of course, excellent.

Since Ubuntu’s network driver for my card didn’t work, I installed ndiswrapper so I could use the Windows drivers. I was happy to discover that Ubuntu includes ndiswrapper by default, but it’s a rather old version (1.1, the current is 1.4). After getting Ubuntu’s provided package to work, I decided to install the newest version. After downloading the source, I quickly realized that not a single development package was installed. Although I can understand why they made this choice, it’s still a bit of a shock every time I try to compile something on a new Ubuntu install. After installing the development packages for C,C++, and Python, as well as the kernel headers, I ran make again, only to be confronted with the following error:

andy@neverwhere:~/Desktop/Downloads/ndiswrapper-1.4$ make
make -C driver
make[1]: Entering directory `/home/andy/Desktop/Downloads/ndiswrapper-1.4/driver'
make -C /lib/modules/2.6.12-9-386/build SUBDIRS=/home/andy/Desktop/Downloads/ndiswrapper-1.4/driver \
DRIVER_VERSION=1.4
/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.12-9-386/scripts/gcc-version.sh: line 11: gcc-3.4: command not found
/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.12-9-386/scripts/gcc-version.sh: line 12: gcc-3.4: command not found
make[2]: gcc-3.4: Command not found


It turns out that, although the default compiler for Ubuntu is gcc-4.0, the kernel headers are linked to gcc-3.4. Definitely not good. As a quick and dirty fix I created a symbolic link for /usr/bin/gcc-3.4 to /usr/bin/gcc-4.0, and although it compiled without complaint, modprobe complained that the resulting module was in ‘an invalid format’. I’m not sure whether the kernel is in fact compiled with gcc-3.4 or not, or whether I’m doing something wrong. I would be very dissapointed if I had to keep gcc-3.4 installed to compile anything that used the kernel headers. Eventually I decided to return to the stock Ubuntu version of ndiswrapper, and so far it’s working perfectly.

Although these are just my quick and dirty first impressions, I feel comfortable saying Ubuntu 5.10 is one of the most polished Linux distributions on the market, a very impressive feat for such a young distribution. The default selection of packages is excellent, and for anyone who needs more advanced functionality, it’s easy to add. The install is easy, fast, and hardware detection is excellent. Gnome 2.12.1 is well configured, clean, and surprisingly quick (and will probably improve in speed in the near future). Although not problem-free, Ubuntu is still an absolutely fantastic distribution, especially for desktop users who are new to Linux.

The Warriors just started on Spike TV, and as inspiration for my English paper I’m going to watch it. Maybe my topic will be “Gang Warfare and Mime Attacks in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream”.

CAAAAAAAAN YOU DIG IT!?!?

My TA will love it.

~ by Andrew on October 13, 2005.