First, I spent a long time on getting the wireless connection active. The biggest problem seems to be that with WPA enabled and using a Intel Centrino 2200 wireless connection, the default Ubuntu 6.06 installer is a little confused. The card itself works right out of the box and the wireless connection was there, but it wouldn't connect to my network because I had WPA-PSK enabled. As it turns out, the biggest trick was that you have to make absolutely certain that the ssid that you type in is exactly the same "case" as the actual ssid value. Also, even though Windows calls the information you enter a password to connect to the network with WPA, the wpa_supplicant calls it a passphrase.
The solution I used was to make changes to my /etc/network/interfaces file. My wireless card was called eth1.
The file already contained...
auto eth1
iface eth1 inet dhcp
..and then I added immediately below it...
wpa-ssid
wpa-passphrase
Then I did an sudo ifdown eth1
Then sudo ifup eth1 and done.
Yes, I'm aware that this ins't the most secure or flexible option, but it works for me now. I'll investigate further when it becomes a problem later, like at a public open AP. :)
Secondly, I made my machine a dual boot (it even works with Windows Vista beta 2) with Ubuntu 6.06 and a version of windows. The simplest thing to do is, with a blank harddrive, install windows into only one partition by making at least two partitions before you choose to install windows. Make sure that the second partition is big enough for the linux install. Install windows. Then install linux into the other partition. The safest thing for me was to manually partition the second partition into swap and home and root. Once installed and booted into, then make a backup of your /boot/grub/menu.lst file. Then sudo vi /boot/grub/menu.lst file and add the windows installation into the list using the example in the file as a guideline and uncommenting the hiddenmenu option. You might also want to increase the delay to 5 seconds or more, just in case you forget about it the next time. Then save the file.
The next time you reboot, if you edited the menu.lst file properly, should show Windows in your list of choices. At least for Vista beta2, the windows bootloader couldn't find c:\windows\boot\winloader.exe anymore, so I used the install CD for Windows to repair it. After the repair, the computer can now boot in to either OS just fine.
Eventually, I'll add this stuff to the Ubuntu wiki, but I lazily didn't feel like taking the time.
