[mdlug] Wireless Debian KDE/LXDE

[Harry Burleson]

I'm guessing that Console Kit and/or Policy Kit may be causing problems with your
wireless card access. They set up a framework of inter-process communication in X and
cause lots of frustration if the policies are not set up correctly.

I have used Debian Testing (not on my laptop) and had a few aggravating problems in my
desktops, such as:

I installed XFCE desktop and the shutdown, suspend, hibernate buttons were grayed out
UNLESS, I logged on as root. That problem was solved by using Gnome Display Manager (not
Light DM or SLIM); I suppose KDM would work ok, too.

I tried LXDE once and the configuration was pretty spartan.

XSANE will only operate as root.

When I plug in a USB thumb drive, the file managers show user and group as root. Unless I
log on as root, I can only read from them.

It seems to me that Debian does a poor job configuring some of their packages, especially
desktops other than KDE or GNOME. I use Linux Mint Debian Edition, XFCE, x86-64 and the
above mentioned problems seemed to magically go away. I guess the derivative Debian distro
developers know how to fix the problems.

Some suggestions:

Just for fun try logging on to LXDE as root.

If you haven't done so install the lshw package and run it from an x terminal and from a
console outside X.

If you haven't done so yet try running the ncurses version of wicd from a console outside
X as a normal user or root.

Also, you might want to check and see if wpa supplicant and wireless tools packages are
installed.

good luck

h