Marla Parker's Weblog

As of the new year, I got a new laptop: a Tadpole Talin running JDS. Unfortunately it was running JDS 1, but it came with a DVD and instructions for installing JDS 2, which worked just fine in the few hours it said it should take. Did not require much attention from me, either.

I'd been using JDS 1 for some time, but had my old PC as dual boot. The only time I would boot Windows was when I wanted to be wireless or, even more rare, print something.

To my delight, after installing JDS 2 on my new Tadpole, wireless works! I should get some client software to tell me what wireless networks are available and stuff like that, but for now it seems to be good enough. I configured our home WAP to connect to the ethernet device address for eth1, which is easily accessible when I double-click on the second network icon on my screen. I have to su to root and type ifup eth1 to get the wireless working. I'd like to have it boot wired, when there is a wired network available, and try wireless after that. But not enough to figure it out so far. The wireless works wherever it can find a WAP to connect to that is open.

I wanted to switch to Firefox and Thunderbird, too, but conservatively chose to avoid changing too many variables at once. So now they are relegated to the world of round-to-its, as in "I'll get around to it eventually..."

Also not sure I will be able to make it print to my home printer, a Brother MFC-3420C. It eats expensive ink though, even if you never use it to actually print, so maybe I'll get a new printer that is known to work with JDS and has lower maintenance costs, hopefully.

I love being on linux.