[sf-lug] SF-LUG meeting notes for Sunday June 4, 2017

[acohen36]

Bobbie Sellers <bliss-sf4ever at dslextreme.com> wrote:
> And anyone who attended the meeting is free to
> supply corrections to the misinformation I may have
> inadvertently given about this meeting.

>From what little I gathered by arriving late to the meeting, I think that 
1) Seth was assisting Tom in getting a "Persistent Install" of Kali Linux 
Live to work on Tom's Dell E6420 Latitude, and 2) the lack of success with 
installing Debian on Eric's Lenovo Thinkpad 10 may have been, I think, due 
to Debian's freezup on the network-recognition part of the installation.

Bit of a related semi-rant now follows (and IIRC, I said some of this to 
Eric, Bobbie, and Seth).......

.. begin semi-rant ..
In my own experience, there are _three_ main categories of network 
hardware device drivers, both for wired and for wireless networking 
devices;
- Device drivers "natively" compiled into the Linux kernel.
- Third party device drivers obtained from either the device
manufacturers (e.g., on an included mini CD or available as
downloads from their websites) or else separately obtainable
and compilable from Linux distro maintainers' sites.
- Device drivers in Windows (ugh, I know!) that will be made to
function in a given Linux distro by using the NDISwrapper
driver-"wrapping" app; see ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net

Then there are the _two_ main media categories of Linux
distros;
- Full Installation distros on CD, DVD, USB media
- Live, flexibly-installable distros on CD, DVD, USB media

It seems to me that more often than not, full installation distro media 
_always_ include the more common native kernel-compiled drivers for 
wire/ethernet adapters but _frequently_ leave out the third party drivers 
for internal WiFi adapters. Cases in point are the Debian and Ubuntu 
installers' requirements to have the third party device drivers for 
internal Broadcom WiFi adapters available on installation or on attached 
external media _before_ installation can proceed. IIRC, I think Daniel G 
brought up a nearly identical point in a previous SF-LUG post dated 
2016-07-04. I would even hazard a guess that the requirement for a third 
party device driver for an internal WiFi adapter _may have caused_ the 
freezeup during Eric's Debian installation on his Thinkpad 10 (yep, I 
already mentioned this above.)  AAMOF, for using Broadcom's internal WiFi 
adapters in Debian and Ubuntu, you sort of _have to_ first install these 
distros using the native wired/ethernet drivers, and then _only afterward_ 
get WiFi working by following the non-NDISwrapper instructions at 
wiki.debian.org/bcm43xx or wiki.debian.org/brcm80211. Of course another 
viable option in case of any drivers' doubt, is to install Debian or 
Ubuntu using a USB WiFi adapter with _known_ native Linux kernel support.

Bobbie Sellers <bliss-sf4ever at dslextreme.com> wrote:
> We tried PC-LOS but it could not finish its installation.
> Knoppix would run but we had no time left to try to install
> it from my Flash Drive.  Knoppix, you know, installs to a
> fairly standard Debian.

Both PCLOS and Knoppix are live-bootable-on-media Linux distros.
While it _could_ be used to install Debian, I don't think the version 
Knoppix installs is considered "a fairly standard Debian." Instead, 
Knoppix installs a decidedly _non_ standard mix of Debian testing and 
unstable -- see knoppix.net/wiki/Full_HD_install_-_warning. As far as 
networking support, the latest Knoppix 4GB+ liveDVD/liveUSB releases are 
extraordinarily good, IMHO, in including a wide variety of fully 
functional third party device drivers, such as those for the internal 
Broadcom WiFi adapters mentioned above for Debian-based distros. Unsure if 
the PCLOS liveDVD/liveUSB that Bobbie S used on Eric's laptop failed to 
finish the install due to a missing third party internal WiFi device 
driver, but in any case, I _do_ suggest that the latest Knoppix 4GB+ live 
media is more likely to provide the missing internal WiFi device driver 
than probably most other Linux live media distros.

.. end semi-rant ..

Anyone else is _very much_ urged/encouraged to weigh-in on the above, 
e.g., Daniel G, Rick M, Michael P, Seth M, Akkana P, Jim S, ... etcetera. 
TYIA,
-A


acohen36 at sdf.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.org