Actually, no one asked.

But I don’t care. I’ll tell you anyway.

Remember that Laptop I was working with? Dell was kind enough to send me a new (or at least new to me) CD/DVD drive as well as a hard drive. And to my surprise, they worked great. Before long I had Kubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft installed and everything is looking peachy.

I was pleased to see that the wireless adapter was recognized by the OS. I started trying to connect to my wireless network, but there were no options for WPA security. This was no good. I did a little research and found that WPA security isn’t available in the base install of Kubuntu.

I installed and configured Knetworkmanger and tried that. And it looked like it would work. But as it attempted to connect to my network, it hung at 28% and got no further. I tried a number of other things, but the results remained the same until I manage to change enough settings and the networking completely. I got frustrated and walked away.

But I don’t give up that easy. I reinstalled Kubuntu and and began looking around again. It occurred to me that I never actually connected to any network with the wireless card. I turned the security off and tried to connect to the wireless network. Still no dice.

More research. Perhaps the firmware to the wireless wasn’t installed correctly. I found some steps to correct that and followed them. I tried to connect. Success.

I reconfigured the security and tried again.

No dice. It took me a few minutes to consider it, but it came to me that I keep my SSID hidden. I enabled SSID broadcast and tried again. It connected like a champ.

As a matter of fact, I sit here now in front of the TV (Watching The Search for Spock) connected in just that fashion.

I’m sure no one is as impressed with me as I am, but then again, I don’t care about that either.