"Join the army they say, see the world they say"

Over the last 8 - 10 years I have been a constant Windows user. During this time I made a number of half-hearted attempts to switch or Linux but every time I would hit a road block and would retreat back to the comfort of Windows.

You won't believe how much slack I've been getting specially in the last two and a half years from a number of my peers and work colleagues (aka. Linux weenies) who have been trying to persuade me to switch to the “light side”.

Anyway recently I've made a decision to give Linux another try, but this time I've decided to make the effort of getting the thing fully working and using it for some time (at least a few weeks) before deciding on which platform is better suited for my needs. So last weekend I installed Fedora Core 3 on my laptop and then spent the whole of Sunday (from 6:30 am to 11:30 pm) updating it and getting the wireless to work. I have to admit that I thought that wireless stuff will be hard but I had no idea that it would be THAT hard. Even on a “primitive” OS, like Windows XP, wireless pretty much works out of the box, so I wasn't expecting to have to spend more then 12 hours to get it to work on FC3.

The pain I've suffered has made me even more determined to persevere in my attempt to get the environment fully set up, but it has also made me realise that the documentation on this subject is scarse, out of date, misleading and sometimes just plain wrong. My next blog entry will contain a full how-to for setting up Intel PRO 2200BG based wireless with WPA encryption.

Vlad