Should I just want one final release that comes out on April 2007 according to Ubuntu.com?
With much excitement, I installed Ubuntu 7.04 beta on my laptop (Gateway MT3418). Everything seemed ok, but one crucial thing was missing. Ubuntu could not detect my wireless card (Realtek 8085). I went to the Realtek website to download the linux driver but they said that it should be already in the kernel. I could not understand why it did not work because I previously had Ubuntu 6.10 installed on the laptop and my wireless card worked fine. So after hours wasted trying to install the driver, I gave up and reinstall 6.10. Maybe I'll give 7.04 another try later in life.
the driver is rt818x but if you use wpa encryption then i would suggest to use ndiswrapper. thats what i did on 7.04. the rt818x is in the kernel but it doesn't autoload. it is better to use ndiswrapper and is easy to do. I have a mt3418 and it is actually a realtek 8185. The driver is now in 7.04 but again i suggest ndiswrapper
ReplyDeleteTony
Just wondering how everything turned out for you with your wireless card, I'm looking at purchasing a Gateway MT3707 that has the same wireless card and was just curious if you had to stick with one of the older distros. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteMatthew
I actually fixed the issue. For some reason, the card was blacklisted. I just modified the module file (don't remember exact path). It works now, but it has a bug where the last letter of essid is dropped. So when i set essid i have to add random extra character at the end. Hope this helps.
ReplyDeleteI have the exact same laptop with 6.06. Do you have sound? I haven't ever had sound with this laptop and have been looking for someone with the same laptop to lend some advice. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, I have looked for months and I have not successfully got the sound to work on Linux. I have tried different distros such as PCOSLinux 2007, Fedora 7, and OpenSuse, and PC-BSD, but no sound. I hope someone else had better luck or hope that they have a fix eventually. One option that I've seen is to purchase a usb or pcmia sound card that is currently supported on Linux.
ReplyDeleteTo fix the sound issue you can follow the patch guide on this page.
ReplyDeletehttp://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=352553&page=4
Thank you very much Kye, I actually have given up trying and was contemplating buying a usb audio card. But now that I got a fixed, I can finally enjoy Ubuntu to the fullest, sound and all. Thanks a lot. I'm having a little issue with my WiFi, it used to work before, now it does not. I wonder if that's a common problem.
ReplyDeleteYaY, finally, I was able to get both WiFi (RTL8185) and sound (nVidia MCP51) for my Gateway MT3418 on Ubuntu 7.04 Fiesty. All thanks to this forum thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=511876
ReplyDeleteI hope it helps another poor soul. I can finally get full advantage of my machine after 8 months. Enjoy
Which patches did you specifically use for sound off that thread? I see a lot of techniques in that thread.
ReplyDeleteThanks once again
Sorry for the double post but I just remembered...are you using 7.04 Beta when you got sound working and is it the 32 or 64 bit version?
ReplyDeleteThis weekend I'm going to give it another attempt. Any other advice to give to a fellow mt3418 user?
Thanks!
Dear Greg,
ReplyDeleteI was able to get the sound working by following directions from post #13 of that thread. I got it working with Ubuntu 7.04 beta, as well as the normal 7.04 release. I was also able to use the same patch of Ubuntu 7.10 Gusty (AMD64) when that came out as well. I wish you the best of luck, let me know if you are having more issues.
Hey. I've been able to get sound working perfectly in Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon AMD64. The only issues have been some missing development packages that caused some initial frustration.
ReplyDeleteI'm still having issues with wireless. When I pop open the network manager applet, I can see that it's still using the 8180 driver. Does the applet report the same for you? I can connect with this driver no problem but on such things as driver updates for Nvidia or package updates causes the machine to freeze solid and the only way out is a reboot. Even in terminal (I cant remember the command offhand), it's reported that the 8185 driver is loaded as primary and 8180 as secondary. If I blacklist the 8180 driver, I get no wireless at all. Any advice? Which ndiswrapper version did you use?
Thanks!
I was able to get wireless working without ndiswrapper (I also got it working with ndiswrapper as well). If you uninstall ndiswrapper, you should be able to use the default 8180 driver. I was never able to get WPA authentication to work with either ndiswrapper and without it. (I could not get wpa_supplicant to work). But I am able to get connect to wireless with wpa encryption which is sufficient for now. I don't remember what version of ndiswrapper I used. I installed it through the Add/Remove Applications utility.
ReplyDeleteGood luck. Let me if there's anything else I can help with.