First Boot

On Tuesday I ordered a copy of SuSE Linux 8.1 from Dabs, and it arrived this morning. Yay! The installation process was quite simple: I chose the basic install, with KDE and OpenOffice, and added a few other things, like Mozilla and Opera. The installer ran through its paces, picked up my graphics card, monitor, printer and webcam... but no network.

We run a wireless network here at Sunpig Central. For me, this means I have a PCMCIA wireless card (a WebGear Aviator Pro from a couple of years ago) stuck in a PCMCIA adapter. According to the PCMCIA documentation within Linux, this card should work. I know it works, because on my last two Linux adventures I have had it working. But the SuSE installer didn't pick it up. So now I'm trying desperately to remember what I did the last time to get it running.

On the positive side, thanks to the wonders of broadband, I also happen to have a set of Mandrake 9.0 ISO images. I'm in the middle of burning these to CD-ROM right now, and I might just try installing it to see if it's any better at detecting the PCMCIA card.

Any Linux gurus out there, please feel free to comment on my plight....