Hi,
I have been using linux for about 6 months now, so I'm relatively new to some things and still can't operate without certain things included in the major distros (ie graphical tools).

I just installed R5E50, and I have had a hell of a time getting the network interfaces setup. I have two built-in wired ethernet adapters and one wireless card (rt2500). I've gotten one of the on board wired cards configured using ifconfig (auto setup during install failed, why I'm not sure). I desperately need to get the rt2500 working so that I don't have to drape a 40 ft ethernet cable across my living area.

I am using wpa2 on my AP, and I have seen a few docs showing how to configure the wpa, but I cant seem to find anything related to wpa supplicant on the install. I tried using apt-get install wpasupplicant and apt-get install wpa_supplicant, and neither returned a result. Then for kicks I tried apt-get install kde (which I assume should work), and still got no results.

So, my question is, in a nutshell, how do I get wpa supplicant? Is apt-get not working or am I just not using it right? Is there also a way I can get kde or gnome installed so I have a little easier time navigating the system (the command line is hardcore, but a bit of a pain =/ )

Well, I've half-way answered my own question.

1. To use apt-get, you need to do an apt-get update first
2. Gnome and knoppmyth don't get along. It might be possible to load gnome on it, but it doesn't work well out-of the box.

For those who might be interested, gnome will not allow you to log in as root, and for some reason prevents the knoppmyth user from accessing... well, pretty much anything.

I tried to complete the instructions here:
http://www.gizmolabs.org/~ecronin/w/Main/MythBox
for setting up wpa2 under knoppmyth without success. Is there a simple network card manager I can download? Do I need to bite the bullet and go back to OpenSuSE?

wpa can be a pain to install but with reading the docs on wpa-supplicant wiki you should be able to get it going.