Network issue openSUSE 11.1

Some flavours of Linux seem to have different issues depending on the
hardware involved - in my case, I am using a Dell D600 notebook.

I put Ubuntu on it a while back - started with Hardy Heron, where I
had a difficult time getting the wireless network to work. Eventually
(after a month of grief and experimentation) it worked (no reason why
it suddenly decided to work). Hardy heron worked fine, then I did the
update to Ibex. With Ibex, the networking worked fine, but on occasion
the mouse (touchpad) froze - solved by rebooting - not a pretty
solution, but it did work. What worked fine was the ability to mount
and access shared network drives at home, on Windoze-based machines.

Two days ago I did the update to Ubuntu 9.10. All updates had been
done using the update manager. The system would boot up fine, but as
soon as I tried to open any application, it froze totally.

Fortunately, I had nothing of value on the drive, so I didn't feel any
loss blowing it all away and starting over. I figured I would try
Fedora - bad mistake, as the screen froze and flickered with just the
Fedora logo. At this point I questioned whether it was hardware, so, I
loaded Windoze on it just to see if all worked well - and it did.

I tried putting Ubuntu 9.10 on it from a CD, and it froze up. So I
decided to see what else there was out in the linux world that would
work, and I settled on openSUSE. I downloaded the installation DVD and
it installed fine. The wireless was a bit tricky, but once I installed
bcm43xx-fwcutter, it works like a charm.

There is only one thing I cannot seem to get working - the ability to
browse the Windoze network - just a simple WORKGROUP at home where I
know we have shared directories. I cannot see those folders and cannot
mount them.

Any ideas on how this can be done?

Oh, yes - I find openSUSE takes longer to boot up than Ubuntu, but
once up, applications load faster. In particular, Firefox loads pages
faster. It also authenticates on the network much quicker than under
Ubuntu.

Howard Krakower

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