SUse drivers for an old card, plus general Linux fails

[Background_Noise]

Hi,
First I apologise, I have never used a Linux system today, but I've always been interested in it. With an old acer Travelmate 2400 lying around I decided to go for it, and a "what Linux is right for me said openSUse; who am I to doubt it?

So I installed it, and it seems to be good, pretty much everything is working off the bat, which was unexpected but nice, everything but the wireless network card. The wired LAN works fine, so I have been googling around. It seems to me this: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Driver/bcm43xx/Feisty_No-Fluff might have what I need. The problem is that It's all rather alien to me, and although I'm pretty comfortable with the command line in principle.

If anyone would be so kind as to interpret, point me to a better driver or generally a bit of a place to learn a bit about the OS that would be awesome.

Many thanks

[tliff]

Having neither an OpenSuSE nor an Travelmate 2400 lying around to test:

http://old-en.opensuse.org/HCL/Network_Adapters_%28Wireless%29/Broadcom_BCM43xx looks like it should be more helpfull than the ubuntu article

[naschilling]

I'd suggest switching Ubuntu for most beginners. I do not use SUSE, and I am in no way, saying it is a bad distro. I suggest Ubuntu only because it has a larger user base, which leads to more information being available to help resolve issues.

Despite my recommendation that beginners start with Ubuntu, I've grown a bit sickened by Ubuntu lately. I have the distinct feeling that Ubuntu is trying to be for Linux what AOL was to Internet in the early years. That's not to say it doesn't fill a necessary opening, but people who use Ubuntu often claim masterful knowledge of Linux and they have never even had to use `make` or `sudo`.

Ubuntu has also taken a significant departure from other Linux distros by moving away from the traditional Gnome VS KDE (and others) position and instead built its own desktop environment, Unity. I've used Unity enough and it's not horrible, but I feel like Ubuntu is trying to distance itself from the rest of the Linux community.

[Background_Noise]

Having neither an OpenSuSE nor an Travelmate 2400 lying around to test:

http://old-en.opensuse.org/HCL/Network_ ... om_BCM43xx looks like it should be more helpfull than the ubuntu article

Ok. I followed that, I think it's worked ok. A lot of stuff happened and it seemed to not complain. But. no progress as to wireless internet.

Im really baffled as to why this is so fiddly. And because of it I'm struggling to see why this is prefered to windows. I want to discover what all the linux business is about, but I'm not seeing it yet. I'm happy to persevere for a bit longer getting to grips with this, but i'm getting frustrated. I'm fine with running programs from the command line and compiling programs under windows. I guess that it was probably naive to think it would be a smooth transition.

Thanks for any continued support. I appreciate it.

[Carnildo]

Wireless is almost always a problem on Linux, because everyone has their own private chipset, nobody releases the documentation for those chipsets, and nobody makes Linux drivers for them. Most Linux drivers for wireless cards are either reverse-engineered, or hacks to make Windows drivers work on Linux.