Well yesterday I decided to do a fresh FC2 install on my Dell Inspiron 300m laptop. I did a default workstation install and found it works better than the upgrade I previously did from FC1. One thing I noticed right away is that the yenta_socket loaded automatically vs having to manually load it then restart the pcmcia service to be able to use my USR wireless card. Then since I just got my Intel Pro Wireless 2100 mini-PCI card I decided to give that a try. First I had to install the kernel-source and qt-devel packages (kernel-source needs qt-devel) and did a "make oldconfig" then a "make modules". Then unpack the hostap-driver source, compile and install it. Then did the same with the ipw2100 driver and installed the firmware. I tried loading the ipw2100 module but it just loaded but wasn't finding the card, even lspci didn't show the card so I started searching the web and found a page from someone with a HP Compaq laptop that got it to work and also got his modem to work. I had previously tried to get my modem working but without any luck. But he was using the ALSA drivers and I thought I should give that a try so I compiled and installed the slmodemd program from Smart Link and got the modem to work right away. Still haven't been able to get the wireless card to work though. So anyway it was getting late so I went to bed. This morning I got at work early and got my laptop out and though I'd check into the BIOS if I could find anything, the wireless was enabled but the mini-PCI slot was disabled so I enabled it and when I booted into FC2, kudzu found the wireless card and asked me to configure it. So after the computer finished booting I checked if the module was loaded and it was but still the wireless card wasn't working. Tried unloading and loading the module by hand but I was getting errors about the driver not finding the firmware. Since I had subscribed to the ipw2100-devel list yesterday and got my first post this morning about someone having the same problem with the 0.45 driver and saying it was working in 0.44 I decided to install the 0.44 driver. Loaded the module and it found the firmware and I had wireless access with the internal wireless card in my laptop! Still a few things here and there that I gotta fix though but I finally got rid of my PCMCIA wireless card which was one thing I wanted to do for a while. The only major thing I need to get working now is ACPI but that's gonna be a different story... Few links of interest for people with similar laptops or even just laptops: ftp://ftp.smlink.com/linux/unsupported (Smart Link modem driver) http://ipw2100.sourceforge.net (Intel Pro Wireless driver, has links for HostAP and all needed stuff) http://www.linuxforum.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=74608 (Instruction for getting the ipw2100 driver to compile and load on FC2) http://personal.eunet.fi/pp/joakim/nx7010.html (FC2 on a HP Compaq nx7010, some useful info for Centrino based laptops) Sorry for the long post but I just thought I'd share and let people know there's hope for Linux on the laptop ;) Jean-Rene Cormier
