Originally posted by: thesurge
does anyone know if the next Ubuntu release (6.06 i think?) will include the kernel that supports the broadcom chipsets? I had Ubuntu running last winter like a dream on my laptop wireless included after some tinkering with the notorious ndiswrapper (dell 600m) but I messed something up when i tinkered too far so i fell back on windows for now. when this semester ends i plan on giving ubuntu a full go but maybe i'll wait until this new kernel is implemented because i would really love to try the drivers.
I don't know. But if Ubuntu doesn't include 2.6.17 then It'll be easy to upgrade to a new kernel yourself. See here for a example:
http://wiki.debian.org/BuildYourOwnKernel
Another:
http://myrddin.org/howto/debian-kernel-recompiling/
Ubuntu should be similar just as long as they provide their own version of the make-kpkg command.. which I think they do.
How I do it is a pretty lazy way. I goto kernel.org, download the latest sources tarball (or if I have older sources patch them to the latest version), then I untar it in your /usr/src/ directory.
Then I cd into the kernel source tree. Copy the config file from /boot/ for my current kernel, change that to .config. Then run:
make oldconfig
to configure the new kernel with the old kernel configuration.
then I run
make menuconfig
and check for any thing I'd like to change.
Then I run
make-kpkg kernel_image
to build a debian package of my new kernel. Then I install that. If I need to make a initrd image then I run
mkinitrd -o /boot/initrd-(kernel-version) (kernel version)
but it looks like the --initrd switch in those links would eliminate that step.
Then I double check the boot configuration.. Make sure the initrd is in there and that it's correct. Also I make sure that the old kernel menu entry is there so that I can fall back to a working configuration in case something goes wrong with my new kernel.
But I bet that Dapper will have 2.6.17 so that you don't have to worry about that stuff.
Also I want to also setup a dual boot on my laptop (A Toshiba Satellite A105-S1014) so I can also learn a bit of Linux... however it has a Radeon 200M integrated card. Any distro you guys recommend?
Here are the exact specs:
Celeron M 1.5Ghz
512 MB DDR2 RAM
ATI Radeon XPress 200M
Why not just use Kubuntu or Ubuntu like your going to give to your sister? Both are perfectly capable systems. Should be happy with them.
The laptop should work fine out of the box, even the video, but you'll want the propriatory drivers if you want to have 3d acceleration. I am sure that Ubuntu has on their website very good documentation on how to install it and set it up. It's a pretty common configuration, especially in laptops.
Also take a look at
http://www.linux-laptop.net/
There they have people's descriptions on how to install linux on various laptops and what they have working, what they don't, and how they got were they were at. It should be usefull if you run into any snafus.