Thursday, October 11, 2007

If In Doubt, Just Install the Beta?

A few times I have run into roadblocks where a certain piece of hardware that is unpopular is unsupported by Ubuntu. As discouraging as that may sound, I am determined to get it working. After experiencing Ubuntu and what it can do, and what any person can make it do, I fell in love with it, and will not easy run away from Ubuntu. Well, I have an Edimax 7128G PCI wireless card for my desktop PC (because I'm too lazy to run a wire, and now I can do wired or wireless :) ). This wireless card is not as widely used as the Intel Pro Wireless card or some other bigger name brand. There turns out to be a built in driver for the card in Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty) called RT61, but my card still won't work. It won't use the WPA encryption (even though I use it in Windows) and it won't connect. I had resolved to leave that partition on my HDD for Ubuntu, and switch back to it when it was up and working. A couple days ago I decided to download the Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy) Beta and install it. I figured, "What do I have to lose?".

To make a long story short, I'll tell you this: I am writing this on the internet on that computer with Ubuntu 7.10 Beta. It works. So if you ever have hardware that just is not quite working right and have the time and hard drive space to dual boot, try the latest beta of Ubuntu and see how it works. You just might be surprised.