one inch frame

Having gotten the PC Card wireless (though not the built-in mini-PCI card) working with the Lab’s WPA network through wpa_supplicant, I went to Allegany College (where I’m teaching a class this semester), and was able to easily hook to the open network in my classroom. At home, I’ve got a WPA network not dissimilar to the one at the Lab, so no problem, right?

Wrong. I was never able to get the Proxim Gold card + wpa_supplicant to connect up to my wireless network at home this weekend. wpa_supplicant kept scanning, seeing the network, associating, the association would complete (State: ASSOCIATING→ASSOCIATED it would say), then disconnect and start scanning again. I checked and triple checked the MAC address filter, and the passphrase. Everything was correct, the machine just wouldn’t attach.

Back at work today, and it attaches right to our wireless network, which is based on Apple Airport Extreme base stations). My network at home is a Linksys WRT54G. I can’t mess with the one at home without kicking my wife off the network, but it may come to that.

Or it may come to me announcing that this experiment is a total failure. I had forgotten how ugly the Linux GUIs are compared to the Mac, and how difficult-approaching-impossiblity it is to get new fonts installed and everyone doing nice antialiasing. I do remember messing with it for a long time, and it being fun. Maybe I’m just getting old; futzing around with Xorg.conf and ttmkfdir and hacking Firefox’s prefs.js just isn’t fun. I want stuff that just works, and that doesn’t seem to be Linux on the Dell Latitude D600.

I’ve switched from WindowMaker (still the best window manager, imo) to GNOME to see if the situation is better, and, yes, it is, but it’s still nothing like what I get without having to change a single setting on my Powerbook.

The result is, this morning, that I’m quite strongly considering forgetting this whole experiment. I was excited about going back to Linux for a while, getting back in to the things that used to be second nature. But right now, I’m still using the Powerbook for my mail and IM, while I’ll be doing my other chores on this box, still struggling to figure everything out.

I’ve yet to give KDE a try. I’m not a KDE fan, but I have used it in the past and will take a look at it today. I’ll even try to go back to Konqueror. I suppose what has changed for me is how I view my computer. It used to be a fun item in and of itself; fun to hack to get a better-looking desktop; fun to get the extra keys on the keyboard or the built-in wireless working, or the sound; fun to be apt-get install-ing all the live long day, trying new software, and going on freshmeat, looking for cool dock apps and other things, and the ritual of ./configure && make && sudo make install.

Today, my needs seem to be different. Maybe I’ve been spoiled by a machine that just works, but the Mac feels like more of an extension of me, more like a tool, something I can use rather than something to work on.

Running Windows on this laptop is not an option for me. As frustrating as getting Linux going on this has been, I will not go over to Windows for my everyday work ever again. There’s way too much I need to get installed on it for me to be productive (starting with cygwin, and figuring out all that stuff), and, as ugly as this Linux desktop is, Windows is worse (though I do kind of like the ‘media center’ “Royale” theme that’s now part of my unattended setup CD for the rest of the Lab). I also have a very hard time finding my way around Windows. The constant reorganization of the Control Panel and its thousands of dialog boxes does not help me (this coming from someone who uses Drupal, which has way too much to configure, too). And, if my desire to move away from the Mac OS has anything to do with the company behind it, running to Windows and Microsoft is, well, foolish.

So we’ll see how the rest of the day goes on this thing. I’ve also not been real happy with the quality of the screen on this laptop; it seems to wash out, particularly with areas of black, at angles that I think I should still be able to use. Setting this laptop in the same position as I normally use the Powerbook, the screen’s not nearly as bright or readable. That’s something I sort-a expected; this hardware is inferior to my Powerbook, and I understand that. But it’s just another thing in a long list of inferiorities that really makes me think my next machine will still be coming from Cupertino.