Lenovo G550 wireless with Ubuntul Lucid beta

Forget about it. Kernel 2.6.32 is borked with regards to the compat drivers. 2.6.34 has compat built in, so you can use the ubuntu-supplied b43 drivers, but the firmware is still (pardon my French) fucked up. Save yourself a lot of headaches and just get yourself a nice USB wireless card using a Ralink rt73 chipset. They run for $15 these days and work just peachy.

The G550 has a bcm4315 chipset (4312 rev01). It is a royal pain in the neck to work with.

First of all, forget the default drivers.

Second, forget the automatically-suggested non-free drivers.

So, what DO you do? Well, you visit linuxwireless.org and install the 'bleeding edge' compat-wireless drivers (Search the page for those words). Installation is fairly straightforward, just download, untar, and follow the README.

THEN you go to the b43 firmware page and follow the instructions for the 'LP-PHY' cards (again, search for the quoted text). Do NOT use the Ubuntu guides, they won't get you the correct firmware.

Finally, you update initramfs with `sudo update-initramfs -vuk all'.

Rodent woes

The other day I was worried because my mouse (a VX Revolution) was acting up.  It was jumpy, laggy, and generally unresponsive.  Nothing I did to the mouse would make it work better.  I changed the battery - no change.  I Unplugged and re-plugged the receiver - no change.  I changed to a different mousepad, to the table surface - no change.  I was despairing, because the mouse is no older than a month, and other than that episode of unresponsiveness, it was working great.  And then it hit me.  The mouse works on the 2.4GHz band.  My router works on the 2.4GHz band.  I was, at the moment, doing a CVS checkout of considerable size.  Putting 2 and 2 together, I stopped the download, and BAM! - The mouse was working again.  Lesson learned?  Not everything wireless is wonderful.  I am still keeping my mouse - but I am considering switching my home network to 802.11n gear and let it work on the 5GHz band.