It’s been interesting trolling the ‘net for installation instructions – I’ve seen conflicting reports on the process, and nothing that specifically mentioned Ubuntu 10.10.

So here – for the sake of others and myself – is how I got Ubuntu 10.10 to work with a Netgear WG311 PCI wireless access card:

What you’ll need:

1. A working Ubuntu 10.10 system
2. Admin access (i.e. your admin password)
3. Internet Access – and all the passwords and such to access the home network
4. A Netgear WG311 PCI card already installed into the machine

The Process:

1. Start the machine running. Login. Get to the desktop.
2. Start a console (Applications–>Accessories–>Terminal)
3. Type this:  lspci | grep Marvell
   
4. You should see something like this showup:
   Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88w8835 [Libertas] 802.11b/g Wireless (rev 03)
   (As long as you see something related to “Marvell” you are OK. Your screen will likely look somewhat different)
5. Get the drivers from either
   ftp://downloads.netgear.com/files/wg311v3_1_0.zip or
   http://www.soft32.com/Download/Free/NETGEAR_WG311v3_80211g_Wireless_PCI_Adapter/4-181522-1.html or
   possibly http://www.marvell.com/drivers/upload/MV-S800374-00.zip
6. Open up the “Downloads” folder (Places–>Downloads).
   Doubleclick the zip archive you see there to unpack the archive.
7. Fire up the Synaptic Package Manager (System–>Administration–>Synaptic Package Manager).
   Search for “ndiswrapper”.
   Install ndisgtk, ndiswrapper-utils-1.9 and ndiswrapper-common.
8. Back at the console/terminal, type this:
   ndiswrapper -h.
   If you get a reply with some help text, that means ndiswrapper is indeed installed. If it isn’t, redo Step 6.
9. Switch back to your open downloads folder.
   Open up the folder you extracted back in step 5.
   You’ll see several folders there – find the WinXP folder inside the Driver folder and open it.
10. Set your screen – i.e. move the windows around -  so you can see both the console and the contents of the WinXP folder at the same time.
11. In the console type this:
    sudo ndiswrapper -i
    -make sure you leave a space at the end of the line, and DON’T HIT ENTER YET
12. Switch to the WinXP folder.
    Click and drag the file WG311v3.INF into the console.
    Let go of the mouse button when your pointer reaches the end of the line you typed in step 11.
    The line should end with the full path of the .INF file. Hit enter now.
13. Type ndiswrapper -l.
    The console should reply:
    wg311v3 : driver installed,  device (11AB:1FAA) present
    
14. If that doesn’t work, try typing this: 
    ndiswrapper -a devid wg311v3.
    [Replace "devid" with the PCI ID or the USB ID of your card, in the form XXXX:XXXX.
    To get those numbers, run the command lspci -n or lspci -nn (for PCI cards, the -nn option adds a human readable device name so you can easily identify the device your are targeting) or the command lsusb (for USB devices]
15. Now you have to insert the software module into the system. Type this:
    sudo modprobe ndiswrapper
    
16. Check to see if it worked by typing this command:
    iwconfig
    You should see a reference to “wlan0” in the output. If you do, it’s working!
17. Now add it to the list of things to automatically startup by typing this command:
    sudo ndiswrapper -m
18. …and then type this:
    sudo gedit /etc/modules
    [gedit is a text editor- you could also use pico or any other text editor you have available in your system.]
    Add a line that says ndiswrapper
    Hit CTRL-X to write the file.
    Exit your text editor.

That should do the trick! I suggest shutting down the system and then restarting, just because I like to make sure things are working – and will continue to work after I’ve gone back home!

Sources for more help:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Device/Netgear_WG311_v3

http://madwifi.org/

http://switch2linuxnow.com/home/netgear-wg311-ver-3-wireless-network-cards

http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-5141.html

http://www.linux-wireless.org/Drivers/

http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/marvell-88w8335-chipset-netgear-wg311-pcicard-driver/

http://www.google.com/cse?cx=partner-pub-9300639326172081%3Ac6lzq8-dhwz&ie=UTF-8&sa=Search&q=NEtgear+WG311+linux+driver&hl=en-+

The primary issue is that Ubuntu out of the box doesn’t talk to the internal monitor correctly. The monitor is limited in terms of refresh rates and screen resolution – granted, it was fairly advanced for it’s time, but time moves on.

First, some links:

• Ubuntu PowerPc Downloads page
• Ubuntu PowerPC FAQ
• Mac-Linux site – has a PowerPC wiki that is useful, not much Ubuntu info, though

Here is the procedure to install Ubuntu onto an iMac DV:

1. Download/create an Ubuntu PPC live cd. See links above.

2. Turn the machine on, pop the CD into the slot, and hold the C key until you see type on the screen.  The C key makes the machine to boot off the CD.

3. Once you get some type on the screen and the machine is waiting for a response, type this:
live video=ofonly
Hit enter

4. It will take several minutes for the machine to boot, and the screen will flash a few times. At some point you will see a warning dialog box telling you that ubuntu is running in “Low Graphics mode”. Click the OK button.

5. Then you will see a selection box – select “Exit to Console login” and click the OK button.

====
I would think the odds are good that someone on the planet trying this would actually get lucky and Ubuntu would finish booting. In that case, once everything is up – it will take a while! – switch to console mode

To switch to Console mode -> Press Ctrl + Alt + F1

You’ll need to kill gdm and X at this point. Some sites have said the command to do this is
killall gdm

Other sites said that wouldn’t work.
====

6. In either case, at the command line, type this:
lspci | grep Rage

Write down what you see there.

The lspci command gives a ton of system hardware information. The | part “pipes” the information into another program, grep, which prints to the screen any lines with the word “Rage”, which is the video card used in this model.

7. Then type:
sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf

You are going to create a configuration file [named xorg.conf that will be stashed in the  etc/X11 directory] that will tell the GUI how to talk to the internal monitor.

8. Type this:

Section “Device”
VendorName “****” <- the vendor from the lspci command
BoardName “*****” <- the card from the lspci command
BusID “*****” <- the RIGHTMOST three numbers at the beginning of the info from the lspci command
EndSection

Section “Monitor”
Identifier “Generic Monitor”
Option “DPMS”
HorizSync 60-60
VertRefresh 43-117
EndSection

=====

For example, for my iMac the lspci command returned
00000:00:10.0 Ati Technologies Inc Rage 128 PR/PRO AGP 4x TMDS

VendorName “Ati Technologies Inc”
BoardName “Rage 128 PR/PRO AGP 4x TMDS”
BusID “00.10.0″

=====

9. Hit CTRL-O to write the file

10. CTRL-X to exit from nano

11: Then give this command:
sudo startx

You should see the desktop popup onto the internal monitor – but it WILL take some time.

12. Now you are ready to install Ubuntu onto the internal hard drive.  There is a command to “Install Ubuntu” – it will either be on the desktop, or inside either the System or Administration menus. Find it, select it, and follow the prompts.

The internal drive on my machine is only 10gig, so I opted to wipe the hard drive and put Ubuntu on the entire drive – goodbye OS X 10.2 and MacOS 9.2.2!  After all of the updates have been installed I still have about 40% of the drive still available.

Using Mac OS 10.2 the machine was barely usable for even basic web work (email etc). I’ve found the speed under Ubuntu to make the machine useful again for a variety of tasks, especially anything office-related.

===

Tom Rule
the MaconMacGuy
MaconMacGuy.com
MidGaHosting.com

‘Twas the night before Christmas (or “holiday break”)
But I was still working — I kicked off a rake.
Secure shells were placed on my desktop with care,
So no one could sniff what I typed away there.
My clients’ hot issues were all put to bed,
But what those had preempted still caused me to dread.
So I in my bathrobe (’twas cold in that room)
Had just settled down for a long game of Doom.
When out on the WAN there arose such a mess
I thought that it must be a DDoS!
Away to the firewall I flew like Jet Li
Denied all incoming, even SMTP.
But as I more closely inspected each packet,
I realized with awe what was causing the racket:
A download! What format? I couldn’t have known it
But I found it included a textual component:
“Now JavaScript! Perl! Now Python and Ruby!
On Haskell! on Clojure! on Scala and Groovy!
To the Web-facing site, to the edge firewall,
Now bash away, bash away, bash away all!”
The download completed, though I tried to abort,
And a little man popped out a USB port!
His glasses — how thick! His gut — a real softy!
And his beard was all stained with cold pizza and coffee.
He was nerdy and plump, a right jolly old geek,
Though he smelled like he hadn’t had a bath in a week.
He spoke not a word, but went right ahead
He wiped off all Windows, installed *nix instead
The software I’d need, he downloaded it all
(Still using less space than a fresh Win install).
In the USB port he inserted his thumb
And vanished right into it the way he had come
But I heard him exclaim, ere I even had missed ‘im
Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good system!

–Chip Camden

According to the article there is some real rancor between the iPhone and Android teams/CEO/whatever. Although that might make for some good soap opera type of entertainment – I’m more interested in a comment the article made comparing this spat with the Apple-Microsoft “war” of the 1980s-90s.

For those of you that have been around for a while, the Apple iPhone vs. Google Android war looks a lot like the Microsoft-Apple battles decades ago. Apple went closed ecosystem and Microsoft went with the “we’ll flood you with partners” approach. Nowadays, Google is playing up the Microsoft flood the zone approach with an open source twist.

I thought that was an interesting take on the business/coding/user/and mindshare battles that went on between the Apple OS and Winders….uh, I mean Windows. As a synopsis I suppose it works fairly well – but let’s take a look at what the aftermath has meant for the two companies, and see if there are any parallels to draw in the phone OS space.

Microsoft is now supporting well over TEN operating systems – there are multiple versions of Vista and Windows 7, all which have significant differences (although the cores are basically the same). Apple? 6, assuming you count the Server editions of 10.4, 10.5, and 1.06 separately. That doesn’t sound like a big difference until you factor in all of the possible hardware configurations that can affect system stability and usability – indeed, hardware can make the software look stupid in a blink of an eye, and an untrained user may not be able to tell the difference.

Plus Apple machines are MUCH less likely to go haywire on you – whether OS or hardware related.

In the marketplace, you can buy Macs from a variety of places, but have a relatively few models (albeit well-positioned in terms of capabilities!), all which perform well. The Windows side is a confusing array of options, sizes, price levels, support levels, performance levels, and even quality levels – none of which is easy to discern.

So assuming a similar path in the phonespace means that in a few years we’ll still have a few iPhone models (more than now, if you included the iPad in this scenario) – and tons of Android phones at varying levels of functionality, quality level, and usability.

…. and Google will be using the then-current release of the OS to integrate the features Apple added in their LAST release.

In any case, this is gonna be interesting to watch!

This is a small business, with a couple of people in the office taking care of “just about everything”.

So, if you want to keep your office from working well, do these things:

1) Put the absolute minimum of RAM in your computers. (One machine has 260K for the OS – Windows2000). This will make your office personnel spend most of their time WAITING for their machines to do anything.

2) Never train them in anything. That way they won’t know anything about tools that will help them do their work – like Outlook, or web browsers, or….

3) Don’t share ANYTHING, even though they are on a network already. This way one person will have to wait until the other machine is open to get anything done.

4) Never backup anything. That way you’ll REALLY be hosed when (not if) a machine breaks down!

5) Don’t setup any standard communication lines – like a REAL email address based on the business’s domain. That way no one will know how to contact anyone – they’ll all be using yahoo, or hotmail, or…….

6) Don’t crosstrain – don’t let anyone know what anyone else is doing, especially in terms of websites, usernames, and passwords!

7) Don’t setup guest accounts on your machines – that way anyone who walks by can mess around with the machine.

So how is YOUR office doing? Need some help? Contact the MaconMacGuy for some mostly intelligent help!

Many are afraid to muck around with the standard installation – the idea of messing around with the hard drive, or wiping out their current OS is enough to scare them away.

I’ve begin recommending WUBI to them (Windows-based Ubuntu Installer). Aside from being actually fun to say (try it three times, as fast as you can, while sitting at a traffic light with your car windows down….) it is a non-destructive way to install Linux onto your WIndows machine to see if you like it.

You download and install Wubi, which then takes over the rest of the installation. You do have to give it an amount of the hard drive for it t “take over” – I used 10gig which has been enough for my needs. You’ll also give it an administration username and password – WRITE IT DOWN!

On reboot you’ll see a “Pick which OS you want” menu. Select Ubuntu and the machine will boot in Ubuntu. It’s a full fledged installation, and works MUCH faster on my glacial Athlon 2200+ machine. My rough guess is tasks are about 25-35% faster on this machine under Ubunut compared to Win XP Home.

I can provide training on this, and installation help.

More information:
Wikipedia article on Wubi
The Wubi Installer

The Wubi Guide