061223 00:06 by iDRMRSR

So close. Golly this live CD boots up REAL FAST somehow with a KDE desktop. On the laptop I tried out, it even mounted the NTFS partitions, including the hidden ones Dell always sticks out there.

Sound, video OK, only problem was ACPI. If you didn't boot with the ACPI=off option, nada, but otherwise it came up almost as fast as a boot from the hard drive.

It's got NDISWRAPPER so I tried to bring up my wireless card. I needed to copy the Windoze drivers files, which were immediately available on the NTFS partitions, plug in the WEP key and ESSID and all that, and eventually I got it CONNECTED.

I set up the default gateway, did this IWCONFIG and that IFCONFIG and this DHCPCD and that ROUTE command for about four hours total and NEVER COULD GET IT ON THE INTERNET. I even ran the same commands, route, netstat, iptables, on my working wired Ubuntu and the laptop. Everything should work but NADA beep. Ubuntu and Slax looked the same, but only UBUNTU could talk to anything.

My wireless router can see the laptop and the laptop DHCP can lease an address. But if I try to ping that same address ZILCH happens, 100% packet loss. Magnificent. Maybe I should try to run everything through the DHCP server on the wireless router.

Actually, it's simply hilarious. It's like the wireless card is operating all on its own as a sentient being, having a chat with the wireless router and otherwise ignoring the rest of what's going on inside the PC. What make is so silly is having to copy something out of \windows\system32\drivers to install on Linux. I love it.

Ah well, maybe in a few days my Sabayon distro Live CD will show up. And I can use the little Slax LiveCD in case I need a canopener if I ever fuxor the Windows install on the laptop. It's a nice snappy tool for something like that.

Looks like I got some toys for Xistlessmas after all.