Linux mint doesn't remember wireless network

[Linux n00b]

I'm Linux n00b. I have run Mandriva on a laptop (my father's) about a year now. My new laptop arrived and I installed Linux Mint on it. It is the only one that detect and install all the hardware drivers out of box. Great job. However there are couple of issues I cannot resolve at the moment.

First, the wireless network is odd on Linux Mint.

For security reason, I setup my own and family/friend wireless network with the following standard:

1. WPA2 only, no WEP
2. MAC access control, only the allowed MAC address may access the AP. Disable router remote admin. And if allowed, only computer with certain IP addresses may enter the router interface.
3. Wireless isolation
4. Hide AP

The "normal" auto search doesn't detect the AP. For windows, or Mandriva linux, I only need to enter the AP name once, and the system remembers the "hidden" AP. The Ubuntu network manager clearly works different. I cannot seem to find the option to let it remember and search for the hidden AP.

I also want to install a simple card game pack called xpat2.

The software was not a standard Ubuntu software. I found it under Mint install "ATP" tab. It was downloaded and reportedly installed. I can see it under package manager (shows installed), however, there is nowhere I can see it from the menu and doesn't know how to start it manually. It is a "standard" software package for Mandriva.

Any advice? Thanks,

[Husse]

To begin with the easy bit
It seems that xpat2 is a terminal application
You start it with /usr/games/xpat2 in a gnome terminal
I like such games and installed it and found this was the only option
if you don't know what happened to something you have installed try which + the exact name (unfortunately it has to be the exact name including the correct case)
It is more safe to broadcast the SSID of your access point than not to - at least under windows. A win client broadcasts the SSID in clear text quite a few times if it does not find an AP - I read about this a long time ago and don't remember the details
But you find the option in Control Center > Network - disable "Roaming mode" in the Properties of wireless
You can select the SSID to connect to there
Glad you like Mint

[Linux n00b]

Thanks.

I enabled the SSID now. It was strange that manual setup didn't solve the original problem. When I did the manual setup, it couldn't connect. I feel the network manager is somehow different than what I used to.

About the xpat2, there must be a way to create a simple "shortcut" like windows. I'm thinking to create a simple script. how do I do it?

[Husse]

Now I can finally write the answer to you. When I started writing the answer my /home partition run out of space and I got all sorts of problems when it was not writeable so I had to restore it from backup Luckily I have a good backup ....
Linux is not Windows .... luckily
Anyway - right click the menu button
Select Edit menu
Select Games if you have that category - if not you can create it > New menu
Select New Item
Set type as Application in terminal
Name is up to you
Command is /usr/games/xpat2
You may have a better icon than the standard one
I did not mention this in my previous post as it did not work for me for some odd reason - it does now however
And about wifi - yes it's so much easier to get Roaming mode to work that I normally discourage people to use manual setup