[Techtalk] Fedora 18, updating, and the perils of tri-booting.

[Gnat Alie]

I've been on this list for awhile, but I ended up forgeting my password, so
I didn't check it for awhile, then I recently reset it (so I'm going to
start checking the linuxchix mailing list(s) I'm signed up for. So hi!

Unfortunately my 2013 is off to a bit of a rough start technically and I
was wondering if anyone could help with my issue(s).

So I had this grand idea of updating to Fedora 18 on my Macbook Pro, in
fact, currently I'm typing from it. However, I have had minimal success.
OS X works (I cannot update it to snow leopard because for some unknown
reason snow leopard needs to create a partition and subsequently delete it
in order to install and of course OS X recognizes the linux partition as
free space, but OS X works).

Fedora 18 works, but it seems not to recognize my wireless card as if I
don't have the driver installed. I've already enabled RPM fusion and used
Apper to install the "common files for the broadcom 802.11 STA driver"
(broadcom-wl). If I'm not mistaken, what I installed wasn't the driver, but
I'm not sure where to go from here. My wireless firmware and such was
recently updated. Can anyone help me with figuring out where to go from
there? This is currently I would say my "priority." I have access to wired,
but my computer's a laptop and I'd like to be able to use Linux on the
move, not just OS X. Plus, with the way my apartment's set up, there's an
awkward ethernet cord.

Also, when I updated fedora 18, I cannot load the new kernel, I can only
load the "old" one (3.6.x) as opposed to 3.7.x. What ends up happening is I
get the error "[FAILED] Failed to start Wait for Plymouth Boot Screen to
Quit See 'systemctl status plymouth-quit-wait.service' for details." I've
noted online people have said to downgrade plymouth (I'm running an nvidia
card with nvidia drivers - not sure if this has to do with anything) via
'yum downgrade plymouth*' , but I can't seem to do that. I can get to the
terminal screen once the error shows, though with alt-F2. Then it tells me
there are no matching files and that there is "nothing to do" when I try to
downgrade plymouth. Perhaps I'm missing something about the process.

And win XP gives me a "missing or corrupt hal.dll file" This, currently, is
the least of my worries as I have access to my files and I have about a
month to figure it out (thankfully this semester doesn't require Windows as
much as last semester did). I also have an idea of what the issue is. I
have a feeling that it's saying that because it's on the 5th, rather than
4th partition. I'm wondering if I could delete my swap partition, then
re-make it to be a "fifth" partition so Win XP could be 4th (while still
keeping the Win XP partition). Theoretically people have said that I could
adjust the boot.ini file to tell it what partition to go to. However, I'm
not sure where to find that. But again, it's the least of my worries
currently (once I figure out the top two, I'll go to this one).

Of course, I could just simplify everything and effectively wipe my hard
drive and re-install everything, but it seems that there are ways to keep
my data, so I shall pursue them!

Apologies for the length, but as you can tell, I have a few issues XB.
F18's installer saved my computer, though. So I give props to Anaconda. It
at least made it much easier for me to do my goal than the prior installer
(I had to delete my EFI partition, while keeping the other OS partitions
and the delete/preserve interface was really nice).

If you got to this point, thanks for taking your time to read it.