‘Tis only every few days that I get the urge to show off my uber geek cred.

For almost a year (since I got my XPS 1210 with nVidia 7400.. beat that Apple fanboyz..) I have been wanting to switch to Ubuntu and get rid of my WinXP installation. However Ubuntu is notoriously finicky with WPA2 wireless security - which I use to keep my neighbors from surfing pronz on my connection.

So after multiple kernel compiles, I got the perfect way to have that kernel that runs everything.

In addition, I wanted to test out the Completely Fair Scheduler which is due to be merged onto the mainline 2.6.23 kernel (odd numbered .. so use at own risk). The CFS scheduler has been at the forefront of a bitter fight between Ingo Molnar (2.6 kernel scheduler maintainer and author of CFS) and Con Kolivas (author of Staircase Deadline scheduler). Ingo had been for a very long time, a strict opponent of the fair-scheduling approach taken by Kolivas and his -ck kernel patchset. Then Ingo came up with a scheduler that more or less was based on the approach that Kolivas took (also not original, but he pioneered it in the kernel). This was accepted by He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named and taken up for merge in the kernel. It is only quite recently that he defended his decision to do so.

Anyway, I wanted to test out the new scheduler, because it gave a better performance on 3D games - especially World Of Warcraft

Pre-requisites - make sure you have all compilers and build tools handy. On Ubuntu this means build-essentials, ncurses5-dev, modutils, debhelper, kernel-package, fakeroot

• Download  linux-2.6.22.1

• Download sched-cfs-v2.6.22.1-v19.1.patch

• Inside linux-2.6.22.1 directory, run “patch -p1 < $DIR/sched-cfs-v2.6.22.1-v19.1.patch

• Download IWLWifi-0.1.x   , mac80211-9.x.x  , Intel3945 firmware

• untar mac80211:

  • set $KSRC env variable to the linux-2.6.22.1 directory

  • make;make patch_kernel

• go into your linux-2.6.22.1 directory and make menuconfig.

  • whatever else you do, please do select your processor architecture correctly. The first time around, I got a lot of build errors due to incorrect processor

• make-kpkg —initrd kernel_image kernel_headers (standard kernel building, this can be googled

• install ur new kernel (using dpkg -i). reboot

• when ur in the new kernel, copy the intel firmware to /lib/firmware// directory

• go into iwlwifi directory: make

• first load up mac80211 drivers: modprobe -a mac80211

• then try loading up the newly built iwlwifi drivers : insmod compatible/iwl3945.ko

• type iwconfig and see if ur wireless card is being recognised

• At this point use ur regular configuration tool - I am a big fan of WICD

I know only this - I have wireless and World of Warcraft responds much nicer now!!