After I receiving a copy of Ubuntu Dapper thro’ shipit, I tried it with Mr. Fertile (my desktop). Dapper didn’t recognize Mr. Fertile’s ethernet card. Its like not knowing the place of your mouth when you are having your early breakfast. Mine is an Intex ethernet (LAN) card which has a Realtek’s 8139D chipset. Ok. I searched the internet to fix the problem. The kernel didn’t support the driver & it is very usual.
I got the ndiswrapper, driver & kernel sources to compile. I did extract them & gave a *make* command. Alas! To my surprise, there is no *gcc*. No *cc* as well. Bull! A linux distro with no packaged compiler? How could it be? It should be the Windows folks who can rest in peace with no compiler. Damn it!
To get a compiler, I need to go online. To go online, I should get my ethernet working. To get my ethernet working, I need a compiler. To get a compiler, I need to go online. To go online, I … Where am I? <:o(
Wanting to try Ubuntu Dapper some how, I tried it in office. Installing a OS is a BIG no. So went with Virtual PC, Microsoft’s free offering of its virtualization tech. Shucks! It didn’t allow Ubuntu to boot itself.
Now, I have rebooted to Windows.
Update #0: I have fixed this last night at around 1:00am. Will write about it soon.
Update #1: Here is the procedure to get this working with ndiswrapper. Please do follow the steps & report if this doesn’t work:
Install ndiswrapper (I guess it requires Linux Source headers)
Get the 8139D windows driver from Realtek/Intex site.
Extract it & browse to WinXP folder.
Install the NETSLNT.INF with ndiswrapper.
Make this diver to get loaded at startup. It wud add an alias as a wlan0. Don’t change it to eth0.
Do a Modprobe of ndiswrapper.
Do an ifconfig to find the ip of yours. This is only for DHCP.
Boot with the same kernel with which you hav installed ndiswrapper in future.