I'm using wi-fi by default.
I have DHCP-server in my ADSL-box and I have a separate wi-fi box set as hotspot.
I got also wicd working (another thread here), but there is something funny with the key.
All goes fine until authentication.
With network manager it works somewhat fine. A connection break every hour or so in the average.
For some reason, KDE/Network Manager works better in that respect, but XFCE is so much lighter that it compensates.

That would be nice to find out. Any idea how to find out?
Which logs? Maybe some logging needs to be turned on?

I have autoconnect set on, but when the connection break occurs, I have to disconnect and then connect. Then it works again.

Hi turboscrew!

I have been following your threads but have had nothing to contribute on the wifi problem. I use wicd on my laptop occasionally, but at this time and location I have nothing to connect to - all wired and 50 miles from town - so I can't even test...

But, I have seen several recent threads that sounded similar to your problem, so just in case you have not run across them yet, here are a few realted. I found many others but tried to avoid the dead ends and (IMO) useless threads.

To get WiFi up and running in Slackware


Trouble with wireless disconnecting

[SOLVED] ipw2100 wireless adapter switches off and back on randomly

Otherwise glad to see you sticking with it, you will be glad you did I think!

On the DE's, I am a Fluxbox user and at this time wife, kids and all around me are also now Fluxboxers. So If you get around to trying it I'll try to chime in on that too.

Fluxbox takes a little more effort to configure, mostly the menu selections because they do not use the automatic methods to pick up entries - they must be entered manually. ALso, the defaults may include things not on your system, so a new user wonders "Why won't this start?!". The advantage is that once set up, it is light and fast and just stays out of your way!

In the mean time, if I can get a WAP of some sort going here I'll explore the wifi issues - I have the same hardware, Intel 2200BG.

Happy Slacking!

Xfce is actually not so much a lightweight desktop anymore. By nature it's lightweight but you can seriously customize it to however you like and it supports loading KDE and GNOME service daemons. I'd dare to really place Xfce as a variable-weight desktop due to it's flexibility. It's truly one of the better desktops anymore for UNIX based/like systems.

Mate isn't included yet in Slackware, and might not be, but it's a nice DE as well.

DARN, I wrote a response tu you both, astrogeek and ReaperX7, but the network did it again, and I lost the message. Now at the local evening (really night) connection seems to break more often. I'll respond more properly tomorrow. Meanwhile I'll retry wicd.

Connection breaks are not "fine". Just a guess, but this *could* be your router's fault; I would test with a different OS to see how it behave, or go directly to the "try to fix the router" road.
I've had a similar problem with my Cisco Wi-Fi router, so I called their tech support and they helped me configure it so that the connection stopped dropping so often (mainly, changed the frequency and channel)

Wicd just lost my second response trial - back to NW.
I even checked thet the net was disconnected, then connected to the net and then went back to the web browser and pressed "send", but wicd managed to break the connection meanwhile (within seconds this time).

ReaperX7: Tried KDE at first, but it felt a bit heavy and I was wondering what it would be like wit a heavier application running too... Tried also OpenSUSE / KDE - never again. It was like transporting a concrete mixer on a bike. Mint 13 with MATE was OK - used that before.
Compared to those XFCE is quite light.

I don't thik the problem is in HW: The networking worked fine with this same machine when I used Mint. It also works fine with another machine (desktop with Ralink-card) on both Vista and Ubuntu 14.04 (dual boot), and my wife's mini-laptop: Samsung N 150 / Win 7.

Sensei astrogeek:
Unfortunately the links seem to describe different problems than mine.
Thanks anyway. With NM the connection breaks every now and then, but it keeps up for hours whereas with wicd the connection keeps up minutes - using TKIP. With AES (WPA) it seems to connect, but disconnects about immediately. There are nothing about the connectopn breaks in the /var/log/wicd-logs. As if wicd didn't even realize that the connection was lost.
Autoconnect doesn't autoconnect, but I have to manually disconnect and then connect again. Then it works again - for a while.

With NM the AES /(WPA) seems to work best.
Any idea which logs to check?

About the slackbuilds: You gave some advice about how to get jdk installed.
What I was wondering, if there is a slackbuild for some SW in the SBo, how do I use that?
(I'll use the slackbuild for jdk from the link you gave me.)
I guess You don't install the SBo slackbuild (I mean ONLY slack build when the sources need to be downloaded somewhere else)? You just download it, download the sources into that same directory, edit the slackbuild script (if needed), run the slackbuild script and then install with installpkg? Is that how?

With wicd / AES (WPA) it shows in the bottom all kinds of stuff, then at the end:
"Connected to kotiverkko-G-AES "Nickname: " JAA-SLACK at 84%" and then something else.
It shows it about 1 second and says "Not connected".

So that's sbopkg -d, not sbopkg -i?
(For the script.)

Help yourself. Just type:

Man-pages of sbopkg doesn't help to get the idea what's in the package, and how to use the package for building external sources. I just wished for a confirmation that the slackbuild is only downloaded, not installed. Or is it possible to download the external sources first and then "install" the slackbuild package for it using the same directory?

Here are two tutorials on how to use sbopkg and slackbuilds.

http://docs.slackware.com/howtos:sla...es_with_sbopkg

http://slackbuilds.org/howto/

Yes, but the point is how to use it when the package does not contain the sources. Like in case of jdk, when you have to get the sources from oracle yourself.