I’ve been doing some more playing with Ubuntu and Wubi. I got the wireless working Friday, and I haven’t booted up Windows since then. This is something holding back Ubuntu for the masses. It took me four tutorials and about a week to get connected to my wireless network. This isn’t so bad for me – I don’t mind messing around with things on the computer, and now I’ll appreciate the wireless connection even more. But I hesitate to put Ubuntu on my dad’s computer, for example. He’s a perfect candidate – Windows hater, older PC – but I don’t want to have to get things working for him every time he wants something new.
Anyway, I’m very happy with my new Ubuntu install. And I don’t know how to write a wireless manager that just works.
I wonder if Dell has something. They’re selling machines preloaded with Ubuntu now, and they must have come up against this by now. Of course, if the Windows wireless manager that Dell put on my laptop is any indication, they probably just threw the first piece of junk they found in there and hoped that people would figure it out.