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.