Webs’ Random Ideas

Lenovo X23’s are fairly old laptops. By no means would I consider them ancient, but they have a P3 and usually 256mb of RAM unless updated by someone. One problem with older systems is all the other old hardware besides the CPU. It makes it tuff to find an OS that will support the old hardware. Generally if the system you are using has all Intel chipsets including an Intel wireless chipset you should be okay.

Well I have been meaning to fix up the X23 my Fiance has because the newest version of Ubuntu doesn’t like something on that laptop. My guess is Ubuntu 7.10 is using a kernel that doesn’t like a piece of hardware in the laptop. So I downloaded some ISOs last night and tried installing. I had Ubuntu 7.10 (was going to try a reinstall), Kubuntu 7.10, and Xubuntu 7.10 and 7.04. Well the only one I really wanted to install was Xubuntu and sure enough it was the only one that would boot.

I have to say I was really impressed with how fast Xubuntu booted and I really appreciate the minimalist styling of it. I was instantly a hug fan. I still have a bug to work out where the system tray doesn’t have the usual assortment of icons, but that’s okay I can make do.

After the install, which was an incredibly easy process, I rebooted and noticed that Network Manger isn’t installed. Network Manager is the best application I have found to get connected on Wireless Networks. I tried WiFi Radar and liked the look and feel, but it wouldn’t let me connect to a WPA network. Not sure why, but rather go with something I know works than spend my time troubleshooting. So I looked on the Internet and did the following to get Network Manager working:

1. Open a terminal and type in the following:

sudo apt-get install network-manager network-manager-gnome

2. After this runs, which may take a few minutes, Go to “Settings” and Click on “Autostarted Applications”
3. click “+ Add”
4. type in these values (without quotes):
   - name = “network applet”
   - command = “nm-applet –sm-disable &”
5. Then open a terminal and type the following:

sudo cp /etc/network/interfaces /etc/network/interfaces.bak

6. Then type:

sudo mousepad /etc/network/interfaces

7. Place a “#” (without quotes) in front of everything EXCEPT:

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

8. Save the file and exit
9. What you just did was create a backup of the interfaces file and make a change to it so Network Manager can control the Network Interfaces.

After this just reboot and then you should have an icon in the System Tray that allows you to connect to wireless networks. This seemed to work for me pretty well and once I completed these steps I was off and rolling. Like I said I love the interface and the speed of Xubuntu. It’s running faster than my X40 with Ubuntu 7.10!

As I mentioned above, it appears the laptop still needs some tweakage. I will post more developments as they arise…