Debian + Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG

[snessiram]

I want to install debian on my thinkpad R60 with Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG. I'm a little worried about the wireless working. When I installed xubuntu some time ago, wireless worked out of the box, but debian seems a lot harder.

On Thinkwiki.org there stands it would work with ipw3945, but when I look a t the installation manual it's really scaring me off (I'm not used to work on linux).

I also found some firmware on debian.org, but don't know what it all does.

Anyone some tips for me?

[tom lightbody]

well, you're on the cusp of a learning experience:-) You can either:
1. forget it, install *ubuntu
2. ease in: dual boot *ubuntu & debian
3. go-for-it: install debian, and work yr way
through those instructions.

as a debian user myself (on many thinkpads) I would recommend 3: "tar" and "g(un)zip" and "make" are your friends--this is the classic *nix way.

a useful URL

http://geobay.com/fdf431

there's reports from some 20 *60* owners, including a T60 owner w/ yr wireless card,

http://geobay.com/dda3c5

he got it to work firstly in the way you suggest--native Intel driver--but secondly using ndiswrapper, that I do w/ my wifi stuff because it always works.

also suggested, if you're planning to get serious about this learning thing, is a printed *nix book, one I find helpful is "linux pocket guide," o'reilly.

[snessiram]

So... I gave debian a try.

I've 2 problems:
1) resolution @ 1400*1050 (checked on install) gives me an unreadable image (it seems that al menu's, fonts etc are rotated for 80° and thus stretched out in the width.

I opened xorg.conf, deleted the 1400*1050 entry's and I got a proper image (lower resolution), but not native...

2)
update: I restarted and it magically works now , SO happy]

I followed the steps on http://besttrader.free.fr/pub/Linux_Deb ... index.html for the wireless install. Everything seemed to go well, but wireless still doesn't work. STep 10 and 11 I'm a little bit doubting about. If I do iwconfig I get (of lo/eth0/sit0): "no wireless extensions".
It thus isn't shown in gnome network manager either.

PS: not important but I installed xfce

update:

3) Move windows etc. goes very slow, reminds me of when I deinstalled ati drivers on windows, haven't looked to fix this.

update: I could solve this by installing the Fglrx drivers and replacing the Section "Device" in xorg.conf, but now I have the horizontal-line-under-cursor problem but the fix doesn't seem to work.

[Jedacite]

I'm not sure if this will help, but when I initially installed Edgy on my T60 it did not use the open-source Xorg driver but some other one. This cause horrible graphics performance like you mentioned where you could see it repaint the windows when you moved it.

I didn't bother to move it over to the proper driver cause I wanted the fglrx driver instead anyways, but you may want to check it out that the correct video driver was initially loaded by Xorg.

Hope this helps.

-- Ps. I found Ubuntu on my T60 by far the easiest Linux installation of over any other laptop that I've ever owned.

[snessiram]

I forgot to say that when I installed the fglrx driver the window-problem dessapeared too . With that driver screen resolution @ 1400x1050 works too .

As for the horizontal line under the mouse, I actually never see it except (as far as I can remmeber) when in xfce desktop settings. (I did apply the "patch" I linked to so it might have just solved it, except for that one place then...)

About ubuntu: install indeed works very well and really everything works out of the box. I later switched from gnome to xfce, downladed xubuntu and used that install on my new pc. What I found really weird was that when reinstalling xubuntu, it refused to install bluefish (I had to remove "xubuntu-desktop" and "xorg-core", something like that). No problem with that on debian.