Loading ...Ok the short story here is that the wireless adapter on the ThinkPad T60 series of notebooks (ipw3945 driver) work fine with Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake) IF you are using no encryption or WEP encryption. I put “if” in bold back there because I’m a moron, let me explain:
I received my ThinkPad T60 from UPS 6 hours ago, I got wifi working under Ubuntu on it 3 minutes ago. What amazing feat did I have to do to get it to work? Did I have to recompile a kernel using copy-paste directly into the GCC assembler? Did I have to install the retarded mess that is the Intel ipw3945 driver by hand?
No, I didn’t have to do any of that.
The only requirement, after reading 13 posts on UbuntuForums, 3 bug reports in LaunchPad, 4 long Linux/Laptop reviews covering the wifi driver and a slew of random Google posts, is that I realize that the default wifi setup in Ubuntu supports WEP not WAP.
This doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone that can actually read, but I got so carried away in “fixing my problem” that I was convinced there was a driver problem, I needed a custom kernel, I had to build the binary drivers from wheat, etc. When I finally read through a beginners guide to wifi on Ubuntu the writer suggested “please turn off all security for this guide so you can minimize possible problems”. Since I’ve mentally ruined myself today, I decided I would give it a try, nothing else is working, so I shut off security.
Low and behold I’m connected 10 seconds later.
When I dug into the problem and REALLY analyzed what I had missed, I noticed the discrepency in names… an “E” instead of an “A” on the network properties dialog… well hamburgers.
So now that is fixed, Ubuntu seems to run fine on the T60. I even noticed that by default it fires up the thinkpadkeys utilities for the ThinkPad keyboard keys, everything I tried worked. Screen brightness, volume, LED light, turning wireless on/off using FN-F5, battery status using FN-F3, etc.
I haven’t tried hibernate/suspend yet. I’ll give that a whirl soon enough and give a full review here in the comming weeks.
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September 8th, 2006 at 11:52 am
FYI, WEP is pretty much the same as “no security”, since it is a linear keyspace, and can pretty much be broken in seconds now.
I’d move over to WPA2 as fast as humanly possible, or plug the laptop into the wall for ethernet.
September 8th, 2006 at 12:23 pm
Once you move over into the WPA work, you have to start looking at utils like wpasupplicant and some other /etc/ stuff that I just don’t want to look into.
I’ll keep my fingers crossed that Edgy Eft/GNOME 2.16 bring some better wireless support. Until then, I’m flying by the seat of my pants with security… my intertron is all naked