Re: [ubuntu-uk] Zoostorm laptop at ebuyer.com
On Fri, Feb 1, 2013 at 7:28 PM, Paula Graham wrote: > OK. Verbatim instructions plus chatty asides below cos it's Friday and I'm > about to > quit for the week wh! (etc) > Paula > > I can see and digest all this. But without actually doing it again right now, I'd like to ask for one more instruction from anybody who feels able to supply it: I want one which will show me any other wireless drivers that may be loitering with intent to conflict, whether assigned, unassigned, enabled, disabled, or whatever. Then I can blacklist them, which is not hard. -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Zoostorm laptop at ebuyer.com
On 01/02/13 19:28, Paula Graham wrote: OK sorry - it sounds grim but it's really easy to compile it once you've managed to find the wretched driver in the first place. Verbatim instructions plus chatty asides below cos it's Friday and I'm about to quit for the week wh! (gallop, gallop, gallop) Paula Just saw this, 2 am being a typical start time for me. Thank you kindly. You have inspired me to plod through the whole thing once again. By the way, Mr Shotts highly acclaimed book on the Linux Command Line is here: http://gd.tuwien.ac.at/linuxcommand.org/ Rowan -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Zoostorm laptop at ebuyer.com
On 01/02/13 15:54, Paula Graham wrote: > I dunno, doesn't seem a huge burden to me - the driver's in a handy > folder - it takes all of 20 secs to compile - prefer it to opening a > brand new laptop with a perfectly good Realtek chip (and I'm clumsy > with hardware). Will just tolerate mild inconvenience, upgrade when > 13.04 comes out with kernel 3.8 and native driver - problem solved, > feisty laptop with no MS tax for under £400 ;) Paula If you're comfortable with that, look into dkms. It'll compile the driver for you when you install a new kernel. Regards, Tyler -- "Anyone who truly understands UI design realizes that every preference option is an admission of defeat: it's there because you couldn't just get it right the first time." -- Jamie Zawinski -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Zoostorm laptop at ebuyer.com
On 01/02/13 16:18, Rowan Berkeley wrote: > On 01/02/13 15:54, Paula Graham wrote: >> I dunno, doesn't seem a huge burden to me - the driver's in a handy >> folder - it takes all of 20 secs to compile - prefer it to opening a >> brand new laptop with a perfectly good Realtek chip (and I'm clumsy >> with hardware). Will just tolerate mild inconvenience, upgrade when >> 13.04 comes out with kernel 3.8 and native driver - problem solved, >> feisty laptop with no MS tax for under £400 ;) Paula > > Well, then, Paula, may I request you write a Wireless Installation > Wizard, of as general application as possible, ie providing guidance > for everybody with a converted machine and no wireless, with all the > commands listed verbatim, for those of us confused by the scrappy and > conflicting instructions on how to do it that are scattered across > Ubuntu Forums? For my part, I have downloaded a copy of "The Linux > Command Line" by William E Shotts, which will gradually teach me how > to do all this for myself. I stress: gradually OK sorry - it sounds grim but it's really easy to compile it once you've managed to find the wretched driver in the first place. Verbatim instructions plus chatty asides below cos it's Friday and I'm about to quit for the week wh! If your chip's the same as mine it's easy cos I know where the driver is, if not, you'll have to track it down (if I happen to read my email lists at the time I'll help). First you have to find out which wireless chip you have. Open a shell (ctl+alt+t) type: lspci at the prompt - it'll spit out a list of PCI devices among which the ID of your wifi chip should be found. It might not say 'wifi' but it's the networking chip that *isn't* ethernet. Google with the chip's model for the driver. On my Zoostorm, lspci lists the driver like this: 02:00.0 Network controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. Device 8723 So in my case I googled this string: "realtek 8723 driver linux" and found a bunch of people disagreeing confusingly in various forums - after reading and inwardly digesting I gleaned that there are currently two versions of the driver, one for kernel 3.2 and one for kernel 3.5. To find out which one you want, do this command to find out which kernel you have: uname -r To which my Ubuntu 12.04 replies: 3.2.0-37-generic (No, Alan, I'm not going to upgrade my kernel to a release candidate for 3.8 on my main production laptop lol - I'm going to wait for Ubuntu 13.04) So this means I need the kernel 3.2 driver Found this driver in a very helpful person's post at the bottom of the page here: http://askubuntu.com/questions/139632/wireless-card-realtek-rtl8723ae-bt-is-not-recognized - it's shared in someone's Dropbox but there's testimony from someone who'd already used the driver without having their laptop eaten by monsters so I downloaded it. I can confirm that no disaster occurred after installing it. If your chip is the same, type this command in your terminal to download it and unpack it (it's all one line, the email is wrapping it): wget -O- http://dl.dropbox.com/u/57056576/DRIVERS/REALTEK/rtl_92ce_92se_92de_8723ae_linux_mac80211_0006.0514.2012.tar.gz | tar -xz Once you've got your mitts on the driver the hard bit is done and you won't have to do it again as long as you still have kernel 3.2 (this probably won't change on Ubuntu 12.04 - the upgrades are incremental but the version stays the same). Now change directory to the driver's folder with th 'cd' command: cd /path/to/driver The real command will probably look something like this because the driver folder has a somewhat overly informative name: cd /home/myname/Downloads/rtl_92ce_92se_92de_8723ae_linux_mac80211_0006.0514.2012 Once you're in there, type these commands one by one, waiting till Ubuntu finishes chewing each command: sudo make sudo make install Then do this command to make Ubuntu load it (it'll load automatically on subsequent reboots): sudo modprobe rtl8723e And you're done. Ubuntu immediately starts scanning for the network. On subsequent recompiles, assuming you kept the driver folder, all you have to do is change to the folder and run just the 3 simple commands: make, make-install and modprobe rtl8723e - if you can't remember the module number (I can't!) the commands should still be loitering about in the BASH history - scroll up with the up key till you find them or just make a note of the command somewhere so you can just paste it in again ;) If stuck, this command: lsmod | grep wifi will give you the driver module's ID: rtl8723e It's mildly annoying but pretty quick. Any attempt to automate it IMHO will most likely result in a wasted afternoon smacking your forehead against the wall plus possible remedial cos you've made a mess. Or you can take Alan's advice and upgrade your kernel to 3.8 release candidate and see if the driver's really there, for the good of the community ;) So, less confusingly chatty recap: 1. find and download the driver 2. c
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Zoostorm laptop at ebuyer.com
On Fri, Feb 1, 2013 at 3:54 PM, Paula Graham wrote: > I dunno, doesn't seem a huge burden to me - the driver's in a handy > folder - it takes all of 20 secs to compile - prefer it to opening a > brand new laptop with a perfectly good Realtek chip (and I'm clumsy with > hardware). Will just tolerate mild inconvenience, upgrade when 13.04 > comes out with kernel 3.8 and native driver - problem solved, feisty > laptop with no MS tax for under £400 ;) > > Paula > On second thoughts, a Wireless Witch would be better still. But it doesn't have to be automated; just a coherent, start-to-finish set of instructions that a human can follow, that would be fine. As I said, soon laptops will have become notebooks and the network cable option will no longer exist, so there will be a general need for this. -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Zoostorm laptop at ebuyer.com
On 01/02/13 15:54, Paula Graham wrote: I dunno, doesn't seem a huge burden to me - the driver's in a handy folder - it takes all of 20 secs to compile - prefer it to opening a brand new laptop with a perfectly good Realtek chip (and I'm clumsy with hardware). Will just tolerate mild inconvenience, upgrade when 13.04 comes out with kernel 3.8 and native driver - problem solved, feisty laptop with no MS tax for under £400 ;) Paula Well, then, Paula, may I request you write a Wireless Installation Wizard, of as general application as possible, ie providing guidance for everybody with a converted machine and no wireless, with all the commands listed verbatim, for those of us confused by the scrappy and conflicting instructions on how to do it that are scattered across Ubuntu Forums? For my part, I have downloaded a copy of "The Linux Command Line" by William E Shotts, which will gradually teach me how to do all this for myself. I stress: gradually. -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Zoostorm laptop at ebuyer.com
On 01/02/13 15:54, Paula Graham wrote: I dunno, doesn't seem a huge burden to me - the driver's in a handy folder - it takes all of 20 secs to compile - prefer it to opening a brand new laptop with a perfectly good Realtek chip (and I'm clumsy with hardware). Will just tolerate mild inconvenience, upgrade when 13.04 comes out with kernel 3.8 and native driver - problem solved, feisty laptop with no MS tax for under £400 ;) You could already try the 3.8 kernel from the mainline ppa if you want to test the theory. http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.3.8-quantal/ Cheers, -- Alan Pope Engineering Manager Canonical - Product Strategy +44 (0) 7973 620 164 alan.p...@canonical.com http://ubuntu.com/ -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Zoostorm laptop at ebuyer.com
On 31/01/13 20:30, Tyler J. Wagner wrote: > On 2013-01-31 18:46, Paula Graham wrote: >> I've got the i3 version of the Zoostorm laptop - 12.04 installed >> perfectly except wifi chip is a bit of a pain, needs to be hunted down, >> compiled and then recompiled every time the kernel upgrades - native >> driver should be in kernel 3.8. The current driver is a tad flaky, drops >> connection irritatingly. > An important thing to remember when buying laptops is that the wireless > chipset is usual a mini/micro/whatever PCI card and can be swapped out for > something with better support. When I run into a weird/Dell/Broadcom wifi > chipset with bad Linux support, I buy the last-generation Intel chipset on > eBay for £10 and toss the old in a pile somewhere. It's cheaper and easier > than you think it is. Certainly easier than compiling a driver every few > weeks. > > Tyler > I dunno, doesn't seem a huge burden to me - the driver's in a handy folder - it takes all of 20 secs to compile - prefer it to opening a brand new laptop with a perfectly good Realtek chip (and I'm clumsy with hardware). Will just tolerate mild inconvenience, upgrade when 13.04 comes out with kernel 3.8 and native driver - problem solved, feisty laptop with no MS tax for under £400 ;) Paula -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] ubuntu-uk Digest, Vol 94, Issue 1
Sent from mobileubuntu-uk-requ...@lists.ubuntu.com wrote: On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 6:46 PM, Paula Graham wrote: >>> On 18 Jan 2013 07:59, "Mark Fraser" wrote: Found this zoostorm laptop on ebuyer's website >>> http://www.ebuyer.com/411061- >>> >>> I've got the i3 version of the Zoostorm laptop - 12.04 installed perfectly except wifi chip is a bit of a pain, needs to be hunted down, compiled and then recompiled every time the kernel upgrades - native driver should be in kernel 3.8. The current driver is a tad flaky, drops connection irritatingly. Having said that, the chip might vary even in the same Zoostorm model but I've got 3 different Zoostorm laptops/PCs and they all installed without fuss except for the occasional wifi hassle. Overall, adore the laptop, fabulous spec for the price, keyboard is comfy, touchpad a bit irritating but perfectly useable, screen crisp, and whilst it's certainly not an ultrabook it's not unweildy either. Paula It's always the wireless interface that needs skilled attention, while installing Ubuntu itself needs no skill at all. And as machines get down to notebook size, more and more of them have no network cable interfaces, so it's wireless or nothing (not to mention Bluetooth, which I haven't even grasped the purpose of yet). Would it not be good to put our foot down and say no to products with not open drivers or purchase a usb wifi that is free and cheap and supported by the kernel? Instead of giving hits to thier web pages to dowload thier drivers? -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
