Solving Fedora Core 6 Kernel Panic + ipw2200 issues

More a note to self than anything else for how I got FC6 working on my Thinkpad R51

For – kernel panic: Cannot execute a PAE-enabled kernel on a PAE-less CPU!
Do not choose virtualization during package selection and for a good measure select Legacy Support.

For – ipw2200 wifi not detected
Download latest V30 firmware from https://ipw2200.sourceforge.net/firmware.php unzip it and copy the files to your /lib/firmware directory and reboot.

  • I think Ubuntu has wifi support out-of-the-box — at least on my laptop I had to struggle a lot to get wifi to work on FC5. But I just tried Ubuntu live cd yesterday and it seems to work without requiring me to download,compile,install wireless drivers 🙂

    I still have FC5 but I’m not able to get it to connect to WEP enabled networks — been thinking to moving to Ubuntu.

    • ubuntu cheats – it includes non-free drivers in the distro. It tehrefore does not follow the philosophy of a true free linux distribution.