Gateway MX6440 Laptop

[gotfoo]

Gateway MX6440 Spec here

This laptop is a replacement from my Best Buy warranty. I really wanted another HP but they were all out so they gave me an uber upgrade instead. (Orig was HP ZE4560 AMD 2500+/512RAM which ran Kanotix like a champ)

5.0 installs fine.
The resolution is not perfect due to it being a widecreen.
The wireless card does not work.

5.01 runs fine from the DVD except it does not recognize my Networkcard (ethernet)?

In either version it cannot read my external USB drive formatted to NTFS. It says the Windows exited abnormally and to try rebooting. ?

I am not an uber hardware person so if anyone can read the laptop specs and give me some info that would be grand.

Anyway.

I tried Kanotix 2005-4 but it keeps flipping out at the start up sound sequence. It's sonds like the a CD skipping.

Fedora Core 5 runs like a champ. No wifi of course but it does configure the widescreen properly.

I will continue to post my progress here.

Cheers[/url]

[gotfoo]

I tried Knoppix 4.01 both DVD and CD Live and could not recognize my Networkcard.

In 5.0 DVD I got the Wirelescard installed using wavelan but it could not find my Wifi router? I don't think the card was configured right because there are 2 other people in my 'hood that have wifi running. Dunno.

[gotfoo]

Here's something that's got me annoyed with Linux.

At some point Knoppix 5.0 decided that it no-longer liked my NIC. I fiddled with the settings re-nooted and still nothing.

I figured since I had some time to spare I'd thrown in the new Xubuntu 6.06 disk for fun. To my suprise it booted the live cd in half the time it takes Knoppix. It also configured the 15.4 wide screen lcd resolution perfectly, it configured my NIC and it found the wifi card. After some fiddling with the wifi settings I got the frickin' thing working.

So my fustration is this:

Knoppix, Kanotix and the Ubuntu family are all Debian based distros but for some odd reason Kanotix, which is is suposed to have the best hard-ware support, won't even run on this laptop (Gateway MX6440). And knoppix is a crap shoot on stability. But Ubuntu which is Linux for knobbs works perfectly. Why is that?

So where do I start to lear how to make Knoppix work better on my laptop?

[gotfoo]

I was over at the ubuntu forums reading a howto on configuring wireless cards and it turns out that the Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02) is not very Linux friendly.

Anyway this http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=185174 may help some people.

Also I am putting together a resource page for Linux and Wirless http://you.gotfoo.org/linux-wireless-resources/ that may help as well.

[Harry Kuhman]

Also I am putting together a resource page for Linux and Wirless http://you.gotfoo.org/linux-wireless-resources/ that may help as well.

Please consider adding any information that you get, particularly Knoppix related information, to the Wireless Networking section of our wiki also.

[gotfoo]

OK kids this post Wireless BCM4318 AirForce Card over at the Ubuntu forums worked!!
For the newbies just ignore the distro part and focus on the instructions.
I got this working and I am using Xubuntu.
I have been trying to get wifi working for a few weeks and I was about to spend $50 bucks on a Linux friendly PCMCIA card.[/url]