Confgiruing wireless on Dell XPS m1330 for Ubuntu Hardy

I happened to lay my hands on some hot property at work , its got an amazing finish, stunning looks and for the rest of the non-technical review you watch this:



Now, after getting a feel of Vista that came in along with the laptop, I decided to install Ubuntu Hardy on it. The installation of Linux is no longer intimidating as it was when I first installed it (~8 years back), the process is simple next,next,next,...

After the install, here are a few quick things that I did:
1. Update the repositories : sudo apt-get update
2. Upgrade all the utils: sudo apt-get upgrade

Wireless didn't work by default on this and after some searching and research I got to page which helped me with this:

http://linuxtechie.wordpress.com/2008/04/24/making-intel-wireless-3945abg-work-better-on-ubuntu-hardy/

The initial symptoms of the problem were: ifconfig -> wouldn't detect wlan0
wireless LED - wouldn't glow

Fix: sudo apt-get install linux-backports-modules-hardy-generic

and reboot, if you find the wireless LED glowing and wireless applet unable to detect wireless -> restart gdm -> ctrl+alt+backspace

P.S. Please ensure that the wireless switch is turned on through the process.

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Comprehensive Guide On Troubleshooting Sound Problems in Ubuntu

Just moved to linux and your sound isn't working? Here is a step by step guide to troubleshoot audio problems in Ubuntu. This would prove to be very helpful for those who are novice to the world of Linux and need help in fixing problems with sound card and enjoy good music:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=205449

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Reading from a file in bash

Here is quick and easy way to read from a file in bash and perform and operation on each line in the file:

echo __filename__ | while read line; do echo $line; done #this can be substituted by any operation that you want to do on each line in the file; done

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Setting up Cron jobs under Linux - made easy

Here is a quick how-to to setting up cron jobs under *nix:
http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/how-do-i-add-jobs-to-cron-under-linux-or-unix-oses/

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