Ubuntu - It Just Works

After our recent move, our household is now located way beyond the reach of broadband. Trees and hills make wireless a very dubious prospect. We'll probably have to settle for ISDN if our local ILEC can provide it.

This presents a few problems. Until ISDN gets ordered, we're stuck with dial-up. Problem #1: No modem in our primary desktop PC, and I have no plans on attaching one. Problem #2: Need to use more than one laptop and desktop in the house at a time. Our Linksys WRT54G used to be the access point and router for the house, but no longer.

Enter the box of old computer stuff that I couldn't throw away but had no immediate use for when we moved. Item #1: Dell Latitude notebook with a broken LCD. Item #2: Linksys WPC55AG 802.11a/b/g wireless card. Item #3: Engenius 802.11b (Prism II chipset) wireless card.

Since I also have a PCI version of the Linksys a/b/g card for my desktop, this seemed simple enough:

1. Install a linux distro on the Dell Latitude.


2. Get wireless drivers working for one of the wireless cards.


3. Set up the wireless card in master mode as an AP for the house.


4. Set up pppd on the Dell using the 56k modem.


5. Use iptables to make the Dell a NAT router.


6. Put the dell in a corner somewhere next to a phone jack.


7. When ISDN is installed, hook up an ISDN TA to the Dell.

Okay, okay - maybe not simple, but certainly straightforward.

Since I've been hearing good things about Ubuntu Linux, and since I tend to prefer Debian anyway over Red Hat/Fedora/Mandrake (or Slackware, for that matter), I downloaded the ISO installer for Ubuntu and burnt the CD on my PowerBook.

Score one for Ubuntu! That's right, the installer is a single CD. Not three, not five, just one. I almost felt like I was installing RedHat 5.1 again.

Okay, the install is still ugly. Wow, it reminds me of the RedHat 5.1 install. Let's face it - Linux installers still need some help, as my coauthor Edd Dumbill points out. The installer for Fedora Core 3 is pretty good, although I still think that for most average users it asks way too many questions.

Kudos to the Ubuntu developers for disabling root logins from the get-go, and making you login as a non-priviliged user with sudo access. There's no reason for every other distro not to follow their lead.

Okay, the install is over, I'm logged in. Fully expecting to have to tweak the wireless drivers, I type in `sudo iwconfig` and I am totally blown away. ath0 exists and has a blank ESSID in managed mode. Sacre bleu!

This is the first Linux distribution I've installed in the last year that actually detected an 802.11a or 802.11g card, and properly installed the correct driver. In this case, the Linksys card is using an Atheros chipset, and Ubuntu has set up the Madwifi driver. This happens to be one of the drivers that supports MASTER mode, or in other words lets you act as an access point.

So: `iwconfig ath0 essid f00bar mode master` and `iwpriv ath0 mode 3` (sets the card to 802.11g mode) and bing! I have an access point I can see from my PowerBook.

So Ubuntu is the distro of choice for me right now. Unfortunately, my simple plan ran into a roadblock: the 3Com 56k modem in the Dell Latitude is a "Winmodem" with no Linux drivers. Sigh... I need to dig into my box deeper and see if there's a PC card modem hiding somewhere.