[the] Code Girl

After having my laptop for a week or two, I decided I really should be taking advantage of the 54Mbps potential of the internal wireless. I got a Linksys WRT54G off eBay because I also thought I could use it for this.

I had one heck of a time getting it to work with my integrated wireless in my laptop. Primarily I had issues with the signal level dropping continually. My laptop just refused to associate with the AP most of the time. I made the mistake of choosing the Linksys based solely on its use of Linux. Once I started reading reviews of it, they were almost all negative, mentioning mostly the terrible signal level. Further research turned up the DLink DI624

I’ve had only good luck with DLink products, so I felt good about buying that one. Picked up one from the local Best Buy. It was ridiculously easy to configure, and it was featureful enough that I used it to totally replace my firewall. 5 hours i messed with trying to get the damn Intel 2200 to connect to it, but it just wouldnt. A few days later I popped into Best Buy again and got the DLink DWLG650, so I could see if the problem with the laptop really was the internal wireless.

I chose the DWLG650 because it uses the Atheros chipset, which I found to be one of the best supported 802.11g chipsets under linux. Oddly enough the driver is called “madwifi”. I ‘emerged’ it with Gentoo, and I haven’t looked back since. I loaded the driver, it associated with my AP, got an IP via DHCP and off I went. The speed seems to fluctuate from 54 to 24 to 36 and back. Mostly it stays at 54 though. I really, really, really wish Dell had chosen an Atheros chipset. Since they didn’t, I have given up my 1 and only pcmcia slot. Oh well, I have wireless that works, and that is all
that really matters.

I got a nice bonus for last year and decided I needed a
new laptop. Wish I had remembered that the amount
was *pre*tax. I spent it all on a refurb Dell Latitude
D600 1.6Ghz CeleronM, 32mb ATI Radeon 9000,
integrated 10/100/1000 ethernet, 802.11g, 14″ SXGA
(max res 1400×1050 — XGA does only 1024×768), two
USB 2.0 slots, svideo out, combo CDRW/DVD-ROM
and winmodem.

I think I’vefound linux drivers for nearly everything.
The integrated wireless (Intel 2200bg) doesnt work
well at 54Mbs under Linux. Got tired of fussing with it,
so I bought a DLink DWLG650 and its been rock solid.
The display is very, very nice. Glad I went with the
separate video with its own ram; most laptops
nowadays use ’shared’ memory and steal ram for its
own use.

Finally! I don’t have to mess with the timestamps on the search plugin files to get them to display in the order I want. I found
some config variables that do it:

browser.search.order.#

where ‘#’ is the order number. “1″ should already be set to “Google”. You can add as many new variables as you like (rt mouse button –> New –>String).

Edit your config variables easily with

about:config

NOTE: You must restart Firefox for the change to take effect

This is the best error message I’ve seen in a long time:

You don't exist, go away!

It took me a few minutes to figure out what the heck that actually meant. Basically, this is what happens if your login account gets deleted while you are still logged in as that user, and you try to ssh to another host. I have a careless sysadmin to thank for that genius move