my life

There are a lot of things to knock Microsoft for, but I do credit them for designing friendly, appealing interfaces. For instance, I prefer the IE look&feel to Mozilla/Firefox. There’s a solution to this problem! Install the IE Skin for FireFox.

Personally, I prefer this simple approach at http://pages.prodigy.net/zzxc/ieskin/
After you download the them, go to

Tools > Themes

Select the “Internet Explorer” theme, click “Use Theme”
But, if you prefer to go all out, you can try http://www.firefoxie.net/

The Firefox registry contains lots of untalked about variables you can modify. Some of the wonderful options like request pipelining and prefetch are turned off by default (with good reason, not all sites support it, but I could careless).

The easiest way to optimize these settings is to download and install
https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?application=firefox&id=327

After you install it, close Firefox and re-enter.
1. Go to Tools > Tweak Network Settings
2. Select “Power” if you are on a Broadband connection or faster.
3. Click OK

Observe the dramatic performance improvement as you browse sites like http://apple.com/
Pages will just snap!

If you are experiencing problems getting your sound to work, try using the legacy devices in /dev/.static/dev/audio0

First you will need to set the permissions.. (by default they are 700)

chmod 755 /dev/.static

Now, use /dev/.static/dev/audio0 for you sound card.

Anecdotally, once I use the device this way, it mysteriously starts to work in /dev/audio as well.

apt-get install linux-wlan-ng-modules-2.4.27-2-386 linux-wlan-ng

Assuming that your SSID is ‘default’….

cp /etc/wlan/wlancfg-DEFAULT /etc/wlan/wlancfg-default

Edit /etc/wlan/wlan.conf, and make it read….

SSID_wlan0="default"
ENABLE_wlan0=y

Edit /etc/modules, and add on a line by its own….

prism2_usb
Edit /etc/network/interfaces

Add,

iface wlan0 inet dhcp
#iface wlan0 inet static
# address 192.168.0.101
# netmask 255.255.255.0
# network 192.168.0.0
# broadcast 192.168.0.255
# gateway 192.168.0.1
wireless_essid default
wireless_mode infrastructure

Uncomment the lines with # (and comment the dhcp line), if you want to configure a static IP.

Then run,

/sbin/wlanctl-ng wlan0 lnxreq_ifstate ifstate=enable
/sbin/wlanctl-ng wlan0 lnxreq_autojoin ssid=default authtype=opensystem
/sbin/ifup wlan0

For more information, please see this wonderful guide:
http://www.erikin.com/index/Docs/linux/wireless/dlink/dwl122/debiandlink