#31149 - Boeboe - Wed Dec 08, 2004 10:43 am
I'm not an expert on this matter (far from it), but this looks like the best place to ask:
I'd like to give the drivers a try that were posted in this post, but I don't feel like installing linux for this (too much software I need, and frankly: I like windows :p). However: does anyone know if it is possible to compile these madwifi drivers in cygwin in a way they become useful in windows? I'm still considering the purchase of a wi-fi card so I can't really find out myself, and I'm also quite noobish on this matter (right now I only use cygwin for ssh, I don't know much about what it is capable of)
#31150 - Vince - Wed Dec 08, 2004 11:13 am
Hi,
The answer is probably no since it's drivers related. Cygwin allows you to compile programs that make use of Linux signals without source code change.
This means you'd need to have a win32 port of the kernel drivers to be able to compile the userland code against them. This is very unlikely because if you followed the wireless hacking thread, developers moved to Linux soft as they were no Win32 stuff available (and that the operations needs custom-made drivers)
HTH,
Vince
#31154 - Frz - Wed Dec 08, 2004 12:49 pm
I think it might be possible with colinux (as i understand the colinux effort) but i'm not sure there...
#31167 - localhost - Wed Dec 08, 2004 4:19 pm
I don't think colinux will work either. It's still seems to be using vmware/virtualpc style hardware access via the host OS. I haven't played with colinux at all but am willing to bet that it see's all the NICs in the pc as one particular type instead of seeing the real NIC. Like vmware always has AMD PCNET nics. It's still just a virtual nic.
Sorry. Nice try though.
I'm actually more excited about the wrt54g tunnelling work. With that working, you could still load apps to the ds by having the standard wired nic send out the DS style packets. I think that it's easier to make a normal NIC send out raw packets than wireless.
#31168 - Boeboe - Wed Dec 08, 2004 4:50 pm
what? you mean a RJ45 adapter for your ds?, or some sort of wire-to-wireless converter?
#31172 - tepples - Wed Dec 08, 2004 5:14 pm
| Boeboe wrote: |
| what? you mean a RJ45 adapter for your ds?, or some sort of wire-to-wireless converter? |
The latter. The phrase "$ROUTER_MODEL tunneling work" seems to imply uploading a firmware to a router that turns the router into a DS-to-Ethernet tunnel.
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#31173 - ravuya - Wed Dec 08, 2004 5:17 pm
CoLinux and Cygwin likely don't have the direct hardware access the modified drivers need; you'll have to boot into Linux.
Might I suggest finding an old P200 at a garage sale, in the trash, or otherwise and then equipping it with a wireless card and Linux?
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#31180 - Frz - Wed Dec 08, 2004 6:50 pm
CoLinux does not use any form of emulation (like vmware) according to their docs they switch execution between windows kernel and linux kernel back and forth but i'm not sure how that is accomplished though. As i understand the linux kernel has direct access to the hardware.
And of course cygwin won't work. Cygwin can't run linux apps or drivers it's just a linux like enviroment under windows which also allows to compile linux programs on windows easier
Yet i have not tried it as of now.
#31196 - gladius - Wed Dec 08, 2004 8:36 pm
Cygwin will definitely not work, the driver is using kernel dependent structures. I'm unsure whether CoLinux will work or not, but I wouldn't bet on it.
I actually had no linux install before last week, and set up gentoo expressly for working on this. Took me about 2 days to get up to pretty close to full functionality (development environment, IM, e-mail, firefox, etc.).
#31200 - kerrle - Wed Dec 08, 2004 8:55 pm
Two days sounds about right for Gentoo, depending on how many stages you chose to compile yourself. I'm also using it.
I should point out, though, that other distros can be installed in an hour or so - I don't want to put off other people from trying Linux just because of a long install time.
#31202 - keldon - Wed Dec 08, 2004 9:00 pm
or you can get mandrake, which has fewer installation steps than windows and installs in 15 minutes flat; including the time it takes to select your country, your programs and creating a username.
#31205 - crazyc - Wed Dec 08, 2004 9:27 pm
[quote]I'm unsure whether CoLinux will work or not, but I wouldn't bet on it. [/quote]
Colinux runs in kernel space so it could work in theory, but I don't think anyone's acually implemented direct hardware access.
#31222 - tepples - Thu Dec 09, 2004 12:23 am
| keldon wrote: |
| or you can get mandrake, which has fewer installation steps than windows and installs in 15 minutes flat; including the time it takes to select your country, your programs and creating a username. |
What about the time it takes to troubleshoot the following hardware issues that happened to me when I last tried Mandrakelinux? - A printer that prints everything too small because the autodetected printer driver expects 360 DPI hardware, but the Canon S520 printer is actually 600 DPI.
- An autodetected Radeon driver that fails to start X, forcing me back to the unaccelerated driver.
- A flatbed scanner listed as "unsupported" in SANE.
The wireless card isn't the only hardware in the system that needs to be Linux-compatible.
In addition, how can one dual-boot when the only hard drive comes formatted by the PC vendor as one big NTFS partition? I didn't see any Windows tools to shrink a partition without losing data, and many of us can't afford a second hard drive just for GNU/Linux. EDIT: the answer to this subproblem is QtParted.
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Last edited by tepples on Thu Dec 09, 2004 3:46 am; edited 1 time in total
#31226 - ravuya - Thu Dec 09, 2004 12:50 am
| tepples wrote: |
| keldon wrote: | | or you can get mandrake, which has fewer installation steps than windows and installs in 15 minutes flat; including the time it takes to select your country, your programs and creating a username. |
What about the time it takes to troubleshoot the following hardware issues that happened to me when I last tried Mandrakelinux? - A printer that prints everything too small because the autodetected printer driver expects 360 DPI hardware, but the Canon S520 printer is actually 600 DPI.
- An autodetected Radeon driver that fails to start X, forcing me back to the unaccelerated driver.
- A flatbed scanner listed as "unsupported" in SANE.
The wireless card isn't the only hardware in the system that needs to be Linux-compatible.
In addition, how can one dual-boot when the only hard drive comes formatted by the PC vendor as one big NTFS partition? I didn't see any Windows tools to shrink a partition without losing data, and many of us can't afford a second hard drive just for GNU/Linux. |
Like I said earlier in the thread, buy/find a P200 (I found one in the trash) and equip it with a wireless card.
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#31233 - Krakken - Thu Dec 09, 2004 1:40 am
Is it possible to setup a dual boot with Windows or Linux? I have a spare machine doenstairs it's just i'd have to buy some cables etc to get it working and if I can run it from the same machine, that would be much more convinient.
#31235 - mymateo - Thu Dec 09, 2004 2:14 am
| tepples wrote: |
| In addition, how can one dual-boot when the only hard drive comes formatted by the PC vendor as one big NTFS partition? |
Solution 1: Obvious
Backup your data, re-partition your disk
Solution 2:
There is a program (found it a while ago, maybe 2 years) that will actually use your Windows partition, and install Linux into it as a multiboot, allowing you to leave your partition completely intact and entirely unchanged. I wish I could tell you what it was called, but I can't remember.
Solution 3:
Use Pratition Magic to resize the partition and install into the empty space.
And, of course, with options 1 and 3, Linux should set up multi-boot software to handle your existing Windows installation. And (correct me if I'm wrong?) for those who have never tried this, you will want to install Windows first as it doesn't like working with Linux (XP may be different).
Hope it was helpful to SOMEone!
#31237 - keldon - Thu Dec 09, 2004 3:11 am
| tepples wrote: |
| keldon wrote: | | or you can get mandrake, which has fewer installation steps than windows and installs in 15 minutes flat; including the time it takes to select your country, your programs and creating a username. |
What about the time it takes to troubleshoot the following hardware issues that happened to me when I last tried Mandrakelinux? - A printer that prints everything too small because the autodetected printer driver expects 360 DPI hardware, but the Canon S520 printer is actually 600 DPI.
- An autodetected Radeon driver that fails to start X, forcing me back to the unaccelerated driver.
- A flatbed scanner listed as "unsupported" in SANE.
The wireless card isn't the only hardware in the system that needs to be Linux-compatible.
In addition, how can one dual-boot when the only hard drive comes formatted by the PC vendor as one big NTFS partition? I didn't see any Windows tools to shrink a partition without losing data, and many of us can't afford a second hard drive just for GNU/Linux. |
Defrag your windows drive and use the partition resizer on the mandrake installation to have both linux and windows booting on one hard drive. Blame the hardware vendors, not linux for not allowing support (although that doesn't help you get it working). Or try using mac to lighten your mood, you sometimes can't even have support for your programs when you upgrade it from panther 10.111 to tiger 10.111+ =D
But it's when your modem driver isn't supported by the installation package and you need to get online to download a modem driver that installation is troublesome. Wouldn't it be nice if all modems had a set of commands that got it working at a basic level.
Well I've never had troubles installing linux; so I'm just smiling through ignorance I guess.
#31239 - Zen Punk - Thu Dec 09, 2004 3:18 am
Solution:
GO TO THE THRIFT STORE!!
I don't mean to yell or anything, but you would be surprised what people will give away. PCs have been popular for many many years now, and the local shops around here such as Value Village or Goodwill are THE place for cables(power,serial), accessories(mice, keyboard), and the odd PI or PII that a local school or neighbor considers obselete. These kinds of machines are perfect for tinkering without having to muck up your existing desktop machine. Go have a look if there are any second-hand stores around you.
#31241 - tepples - Thu Dec 09, 2004 3:45 am
| mymateo wrote: |
Solution 1: Obvious
Backup your data, re-partition your disk |
How many CDs is that? And for some machines, when it comes time to reinstall Windows, the Windows "recovery disk" included with the computer will just repartition the machine back to one big NTFS.
| Quote: |
Solution 2:
There is a program (found it a while ago, maybe 2 years) that will actually use your Windows partition, and install Linux into it as a multiboot, allowing you to leave your partition completely intact and entirely unchanged. I wish I could tell you what it was called, but I can't remember. |
I wish I had something to go on for Google.
| Quote: |
Solution 3:
Use Pratition Magic to resize the partition and install into the empty space. |
After spending $150 for a DS, $60 for games, and more for an appropriate WiFi card, who has $70 for Norton PartitionMagic? That said, a bit of searching turned up QtParted of SystemRescueCd, which should do the job.
| Quote: |
| And (correct me if I'm wrong?) for those who have never tried this, you will want to install Windows first |
Yes, Windows goes on first.
About just using a Pentium II computer: I ran Red Hat 6 on my PII laptop (made in 1999) a long time ago, but is a PII powerful enough to run Linux distributions that are recent enough to support wireless networking?
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.
#31242 - keldon - Thu Dec 09, 2004 3:50 am
Unlike windows XP Linux can run happily on a 166 with 32MB of RAM.
#31245 - mymateo - Thu Dec 09, 2004 4:16 am
| tepples wrote: |
How many CDs is that? And for some machines, when it comes time to reinstall Windows, the Windows "recovery disk" included with the computer will just repartition the machine back to one big NTFS.
|
Sorry, I forget not everyone has a DVD burner, or access to all the HD space they need if it comes down to it. I work in a computer store, so I get spoiled.
And seriously, I don't like recovery CD's. I much prefer installing my windows FRESH, and updating the CD with a slipstreamed service pack to avoid d/loading updates. There's nothing I hate on my computer more than trying to install newer drivers & updates over top of the old (or even ancient in the case of a 3 year old recovery CD... then again, the computer would be too old to care...).
I just assumed you had a full copy of Windows. I've met a lot of people through my job, and all of the hobbyists so far have thrown out their recovery CD's in favor of a full (or more recent) version.
Long story short, I'm try to keep my assumptions to a minimal, but I refuse to stop sharing my ideas! (Until someone gets really mad at me 'cause my ideas are crap... which I hope they aren't)
| tepples, again confirming Google is awesome, wrote: |
| I wish I had something to go on for Google. |
I wish I had something to give you to go on...
| tepples wrote: |
| a bit of searching turned up QtParted of SystemRescueCd, which should do the job. |
Glad to hear it
#31256 - kerrle - Thu Dec 09, 2004 8:23 am
| Quote: |
| About just using a Pentium II computer: I ran Red Hat 6 on my PII laptop (made in 1999) a long time ago, but is a PII powerful enough to run Linux distributions that are recent enough to support wireless networking? |
In a word, yes. My main linux machine is a pretty decent Athlon XP, but I have a P2-600 that runs Fedora Core - wireless works fine - pretty much everything does.
As far as the other points you've raised - well, the simple fact is that unless you're already a pretty knowledgeable Linux user, you shouldn't try to switch all at once - dual-booting is the way to go, and as you've already discovered with Parted, there are tools to help with that.
Once you're comfortable with the system, a distro like Gentoo, which keeps a fully up-to-date software library, is the way to go - distros like Fedora and Mandrake are somewhat at a disadvantage, as they can only add hardware support in their yearly or bi-yearly releases. Of course, you can make it work on your own; it just won't be included in the installer. I will say that it's been a long time since I've had any problems getting hardware to work.
#31257 - Boeboe - Thu Dec 09, 2004 8:43 am
If you are looking for an 'easy to install and use' system, you should avoid mandrake, since it does tend to behave quite badly. There are good, lesser known alternatives though. Try desktop distros like Mephis or Ubuntu (yes, I did try a lot of them before deciding to stick with windows :p)
#31275 - Zhila - Thu Dec 09, 2004 2:15 pm
| Quote: |
Solution 2:
There is a program (found it a while ago, maybe 2 years) that will actually use your Windows partition, and install Linux into it as a multiboot, allowing you to leave your partition completely intact and entirely unchanged. I wish I could tell you what it was called, but I can't remember. |
TopologiLinux
It runs Slackware however, I'd prefer Debian.
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#31384 - XSF04 - Fri Dec 10, 2004 7:13 pm
What the hell,
Cygwin emulate linux what do you think is better? between a emulation and the real thing? what a dumb question ;)
I love you though!
Long life to Tux and his family
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#31405 - Boeboe - Fri Dec 10, 2004 8:46 pm
| XSF04 wrote: |
What the hell,
Cygwin emulate linux what do you think is better? between a emulation and the real thing? what a dumb question ;)
I love you though!
Long life to Tux and his family |
get more sleep?
#32001 - Quirky - Thu Dec 16, 2004 10:13 pm
| keldon wrote: |
| Unlike windows XP Linux can run happily on a 166 with 32MB of RAM. |
If you don't use X, of course. Which makes the comparison a bit unfair.