This morning, I got up, ran Synaptic (apt graphical package manager) to update the system, then tried once again to get onboard wireless working. As it turns out, I had forgotten to add the new laptop’s MAC address to the wireless MAC list, so the router was prohibiting the connection. Figures — you always miss the obvious. After tweaking the network scripts to get the key right, the connection works.

Up to this point, I’ve been following a lot of the instructions provided here, since this is a pretty good set. For safety to make sure that DVDs would play, I ran

ln -s /dev/cdrom /dev/dvd

Just to make sure the link existed. To verify DVD functionality, I popped in my copy of The Reduced Shakespeare Company and started xine. Changing the configuration’s experience level to “Master of the Known Universe”, I started the player, then accessed the volume control and turned off the muting on the PCM line. Sound works, video works. I also managed to get CRT out working using this driver, then wrote a little shell script resident in the driver’s directory so all I have to do is type crt on and crt off.

Going into Applications > Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts, I set the volume mute, volume down, and volume up buttons to their appropriate Fn+F5, Fn+F6, and Fn+F7 key combinations, respectively.

After that, I transferred all my settings over from autumn to this computer. I’m now using this computer as the primary for all my work and holding on to autumn for a while until I’m certain I don’t need anything else off of her. The 700M has a much lower resolution than I’m used to, but hopefully that will do me some good in terms of eye strain. It’s also cool to be able to carry it around.

I did have to install the mozilla-j2re package to get some Java applications to cooperate with me, but that’s been the only major tweak required (not even really a major tweak). Other than that, it’s functioning very, very well.