Linksys WUSB11 in Debian GNU/Linux

Been meaning to write this for a while now and by this point most of the information isn't even fresh in my mind so please bear with me...Hopefully this debian method will make your life a tad bit easier... So here we go...
I'm lazy so I'm using a stock kernel. If you are doing the same, get the matching kernel headers package (I'm using 2.6, should work with late 2.4s... I wouldn't even try 2.2). Another thing to note is that the verion of the WUSB11 I am using is ver 2.8. Hopefully this will be useful for WUSB11s in general. First, you can apt-get some important components.
# apt-get install gcc hotplug at76c503a-source atmel-firmware wireless-tools module-assistant modconf

That's about it for packages.. as far my recollection goes. Next you need to build the module. The easiest way to this is ..
# module-assistant auto-install at76c503a

This should compile the module against the matching headers for your kernel. If you want to compile it against another kernel .. I'm sure it's possible by editing stuff in the source directory for at76c503a. If all goes well, you should see a deb package for the kernel module in your /usr/src directory. Use dpkg -i to install this package. You might see the results of this in dmesg. Use modconf and make sure you select this module. This puts the module into /etc/modules to load when you startup. (yes, editing the file by hand also works..). It might not be quite there yet. There might be a line in hotplug that you need to change so it can properly load the firmware upon loading the module. Try running..
#/etc/init.d/hotplug restart

Then take a look at dmesg and proceed.

If things don't look right. The line you are looking for in /etc/init.d/hotplug is
#echo /sbin/hotplug > /proc/sys/kernel/hotplug .... you just need to uncomment this line and restart hotplug.

The line that needs to be edited in the hotplug startup script might be fixed by now. If so, you won't see any issues about not being able to find the firmware. Also, don't forget to update your /etc/network/interfaces with the information for your new interface.. such as the WEP the key. You can also put the info in /etc/network/if-pre-up.d/wireless-tools . Good luck.

Manorama in Firefox

If you want to view http://www.manoramaonline.com in firefox, the steps to accomplish this is very easy. These steps work in linux and in windows.
First you want to install the Manorama font. http://geocities.com/peringz/fonts/manorama.zip

For Linux users, make sure you have true type font support. In Debian this is fairly easy by installing the right packages. Most stock linux distro should come with all the support you need out of the box. On Debian if you install ttf-malayalam-fonts package, it provides a nice place to store the Manorama.ttf file.
/usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-malayalam-fonts/ is where I put my font file.

In windows XP you can use, c:\WINDOWS\Fonts . I'm pretty sure this is the directory for other versions of windows as well.

Next you need to install an extension for AutoCharacterCoding switching for Malayalam in Firebird/Mozilla from http://quicktools.mozdev.org. That's it. Restart firefox and try out http://www.manoramaonline.com. There's a delay from when it initially loads the page and then switches the character coding, but this is only a small annoyance for me. Let me know if you kids come across any issues. Later.

UPDATE: Just use the Padma extension.

First Post

My first post on blogger. Huzzah. Not much to discuss right. This blog will be used primarily to discuss tech related news in my life. At the moment, things of interest are XMLhttp especiallly in conjunction with PHP, Ubuntu linux, random hardware. I'll have something more interesting in the next post. bye..