<SOLVED> How I got my IBM T43 wireless to work

[z120pi]

I am new to linux and decided to install Mint 14 with the Mate desktop on my old IBM T43. I was very impressed with the complete package but was dismayed to find the wireless not working after the installation. This appears to be a common problem with the Intel Pro/Wireless 2200BG wireless network adapter in the T43. I read a zillion posts on various ways to fix the problem and tried many without much success. Finally, more through trial and error than anything, I hit on a solution that resulted in a stable wireless connection to the internet and my home network. I thought I would post it here and would appreciate any comments on why this works while the Mint 14 distribution does not.

I first removed network-manager and installed Wicd. Network Manager was really strange and I could not make sense of it.

I then removed dhclient and installed dhcpcd. I did this because I also tried Wifi Radar, which worked better with dhcpcd but still did not get wireless networking running.

Then I edited the /etc/network/interfaces file to have only the lines "auto lo" and "iface lo inet loopback" active. It appears that network-manager writes to this file when you set up a configuration. The /etc/samba/smb.conf file was also modified to match the workgroup name of my windows network.

At this point wireless was sort of working. I could connect to the internet through my router with both wireless and wired connections but could not connect to my home network over wireless.

The final fix that got everything running was to follow the instructions in the ubuntu forum posted by dmizer titled "Howto: Fix Windows share browsing issues". The additonal changes I made were:

Add "netbios name = <computer name>" and "name resolve order = bcast host" to smb.conf.
Add "wins" declaration to nsswitch.conf.
Install winbind package.

My question is - why does this solution using Wicd work and Network Manager fail? I would also like to remove the "Network" icon in the Mate Desktop Control Center and replace it with a link to Wicd. Does anyone know how to do this?

New Info:

I figured out how to remove the "Network" icon from the Mate Control Center and replace it with Wicd. The procedure turns out to be very simple:

1. Edit the /usr/share/application/wicd.desktop file and change the "Categories" line to:
Categories=Application;MATE;GTK;System;Settings;X-MATE-NetworkSettings;

2. Make a new folder named /usr/share/applications-trash. Then move the mate-network.desktop file from /usr/share/applications to the new folder. This will remove the "Network" option from the Control Center.