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Smartcard reader now operational in Linux!

One of the things I've had on my to-do list for months is to be able to login to work from home using Linux. Somehow, today it happened. The problem had been that I couldn't get my smart card reader to work in Ubuntu at all. I couldn't get the drivers to work, and I couldn't get source code to compile. I was retracing my steps today, and for some reason, the package straight from the repository worked. I have no idea what has changed--I had done all of that before to no avail. Now I can check email no problem. VPN is the next step, but I'm not sure that even makes sense. The only reason I would have to VPN would be if I wanted access to my files, and if I was going to be editing work files I probably want to be in Windows anyway. Though now with the card reader up, VPN + coolkey + samba could make even that a reality.

Goodbye wicd

I had lots of problems with Kubuntu 9.04 initially, but most of them went away when I did a clean install. What didn't go away were the networkmanager problems. Finally I learned that there was a plasma applet to control networkmanager--the systray applet was garbage. That being said, I'm not sure why I still went to wicd. I think I had problems connecting to a wireless network at work, so I tried wicd and it worked. Later on though, I realized there was a problem with wicd--my network connection at home was super flaky after that. Amazingly enough, I didn't really look into this problem for months. Last week I learned what the problem was. It appears that the latest wicd has the fix, but its not in the Ubuntu repositories, plus the wireless network at work that caused me to go to wicd is no longer available, so I've gone back to the plasma applet. I guess I also want to give the kde front end another shot because last time it was so inferior to gnome.

Laptop Laziness

I installed CentOS on my laptop months ago, but never completed the wireless setup because it required me to be tied to my desk where my wired network connection is. I've gotten so used to being able to plop down on the sofa or bed or wherever, that I didn't want to be confined to the desk. I finally started working on it today, but now I'm tired. Its going to take more time because my laptop used Broadcom driver BCM4312. There's an official driver now, but I need to compile it, and before I can do that, I need to make sure that kernel headers and development packages are installed. I updated my kernel, but I also need to update grub so that I can actually boot to the new kernel. CentOS isn't my primary OS so I have to do that elsewhere. I'm a ways from being able to compile the Broadcom driver so it's just going to have to wait some more.