[Live-demo] WLAN and build platform

[Cameron Shorter]

Hamish:
.

2.
Hamish wrote:
> Hi,
>
>
> 1)
> it occurs to me that many of the people at the conference will be
> bringing their own laptops and trying out the live dvd during the
> proceedings. (I've got no idea but) I assume that the conference
> organizers will make available free wireless internet for the duration.
> It seems a bit silly to force folks to reboot into another OS or switch
> VMs just to do things like check their email or do a web search, but alas
> wireless drivers on Linux are still at the mercy of the hardware vendors
> and often some non-free packages are required to get that working.
>
> I propose we include the non-free packages needed to get wireless
> networking functional on as many popular 802.11 devices as needed,
> rather than ask the users to figure out how to bootstrap themselves
> somehow.
>
> I've got no idea how it works on Ubuntu 9.04, maybe it is easier, but 
> for example on Debian/stable I have to fetch the firmware-ralink package
> from the non-free repository to get my rt73-common.deb based D-Link
> adaptor to work. Which isn't so easy when you don't have access to
> download it.
>
> lenny$ apt-cache search firmware | grep wireless
>
> acx100-source - ACX100/ACX111 wireless network drivers source
> atmel-firmware - Firmware for Atmel at76c50x wireless networking chips.
> firmware-ralink - Binary firmware for Ralink RT2561, RT2571, RT2661 and RT2671 wireless cards
> libertas-firmware - Firmware for Marvell's 8388 (libertas) wireless chips
> zd1211-firmware - Firmware images for the zd1211 and zd1211rw wireless drivers
>
> & I've got no idea what else.
>
> comments??
>   
1. Yes, there will be wireless for all at the conference.
Yes, I'm happy to have wireless drivers installed on the dvd, assuming 
that it doesn't take too much space, if you are prepared to set up the 
appropriate script.

Of note, Ubuntu seems to be more pragmatic about proprietary drivers 
than Debian. I know my Lenovo (IBM) laptop has wireless working out of 
the box after installing Ubuntu (haven't tried with Debian)

Maybe we should set up a Live_DVD_Test steps page, which lists the 
things that we would like people to test on their computer after running 
the Live_DVD, and get some feedback during the test period. Feel free to 
write this if you wish.

>
>
> 2)
> For the build scripts I wonder if we can expect the install to be
> run on a 32bit i686? For tarballs' ./configure step, and for rolling-
> our-own .deb packages, part of the build cycle is to determine the
> platform to build it on. If that gets built on e.g. a 64bit machine
> there's a good chance that it will fail to run on a user's 32bit
> laptop.
> ???
>   
Good thinking. I'm not experienced in this. I'm happy for you to update 
(create?) the build process and setup criteria, which should go into a 
build script, or setup wiki.

I understand that Stefan already has a build script which probably needs 
to be updated.

>
>
> regards,
> Hamish
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>   


-- 
Cameron Shorter
Geospatial Systems Architect
Tel: +61 (0)2 8570 5050
Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254

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