As a follow-up to my previous posting, the Linksys WMP600N as I said even worked from a fresh Live CD, no NDISWrapper needed. Yes, I know Linksys fails to provide support for their wireless cards in Linux, but it still worked (possibly a generic driver or chipset driver) in Ubuntu (9.04+) and Mint (7+).

Can't say, is it still available?

Not very hard at all...

I bought the WMP600N card on the basis of its being supported in the latest kernels by the rt2800pci kernel driver module, and I found that I could add what I needed for the driver to work with my SUSE installation using YAST.

For SUSE 12.1, support is found as a package(ralink-firmware) after installing the /wireless/openSUSE_Factory/ repository. This installs all that's needed, including the latest version of the piece of Ralink firmware required to add to the driver for the rt2860 chip found on the card.

Users of Ubuntu based distribution can do something similar to install the rt2800pci driver and firmware through the their repositories. Mint 13 as a live-DVD enables the WMP600N at boot.

The card functions well in both 802.11g and n. However, despite very strong router signal strength, with the card mounted at the back of my PC tower, it suffered from the limitations of the two 2dBi antennas that come with the card. I brought a Trendnet TEW-A1770B antenna set with two 7dBi antennas and a cable connection, moved the antennas to a better position, and that fixed the problem.

This card can be somewhat expensive purchased new, but seems to be one of the better choices for an 802.11n pci card thanks to the good support for the rt2860 chip afforded by the rt2800pci driver.

With a strong signal from an Asus RT-N16 router, I'm getting up to the 300 Mb/s that is maximum speed for 802.11n using 2.4GHz. If you have a 5GHz router, this card might also be a good choice with the right antennas.