Thinkpad Stories 3: "Now for some colours..."

Ubuntu's finished installing. It all looks nice.

I picked a nice wallpaper, set my workspaces to 8, and installed gnome-art (sudo apt-get install gnome-art). Picked some nice decorations (I like the Human theme but not that much) and sat back for a few seconds to admire my new desktop.

Then: I installed Automatix. Automatix had a reputation of being intrusive and all, but is very well maintained these days and I hadn't had the slightest problem. (Easyubuntu gave an error, and less options to install. Don't want to flame though: it's good too and my previous favorite.)

This took a while.

There were to other things I wanted to solve before being completely satisfied.

The first was WPA support since my home network uses that.
I found a lot of information on the forums, configure this and write that, but here is the most easy way to do it:

• Make sure wpa-supplier and gnome-network-tools are installed.
• sudo gedit /etc/network/interfaces. Uncomment everything except local loopback entries.
• Note: you can use commands like
  /wpa_supplicant -w -i eth1 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf -D wext
  and write a configuration as following in /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf:
  network={
  ssid="TYPEHERE"
  scan_ssid=1
  proto=WPA
  key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
  pairwise=TKIP
  group=TKIP
  psk="TYPEHERE"
  }
  (It didn't work for me without the pairwise and group settings.)
  But you do not have to. Read on...
• sudo gedit /etc/default/wpasupplicant and just enter this:
  ENABLED=0
• Reboot probably (or re-init).
• I now see an eth0 icon in my Gnome taskbar. I also see an icon were I can choose from available wireless connections. I pick mine, enter my WPA password and set type to TKIP. I also have to enter a keyring password for gnome.
  Waiting... authenticating... assigning address... done! I disconnect my network cable.

See next post for my second problem.

Tags: Laptop, Thinkpad, IBM, Lenovo, Ubuntu.