newbie asks: how to get a rt2500 bus card to work on mandriva le 2005?!
 

Dear reader,

To be brief; I am dutch so my English will be poor sometimes, in addition I am a complete newb in Linux
altough I have used it before.
My problem might be complicateed too...
Well okay, here's the story..
I bought a packard bell notebook (easynote) wich contains a RT2500 Ralink wireless lan card.
After some trouble getting my monitor to work I wanted
to configure the wlan card that didn't do anything..
When I checked the config panel in KDE, Linux recognized the hardware, but didn't show parameters.
In the section of wireless networks there can't be found anything too... I have checked the button in the system tray that shows 2 disconnected plugs and try to connect...
I didn't know what to do..
After some searching I found out that this is a more common problem, however, more experienced users solved their problems by downloading drivers and compiling them and installing etcetera..
That went a little fast for me..
How can I get everything to work, to let Linux search for wireless networks and all?
Can somebody explain me step by step what to do?
I would be very satisfied!
I would be extremely gratefull!!

Thanks inforward, I hope somebody can help me out here! (You can also mail to derups@gmail.com)

My first suggestion would be to upgrade to Mandriva 2006 if possible (download the free edition to start). It has much better wireless support than 2005. It also includes the driver you need.

Barring that option, you can get the source code here. Download it to a directory, and extract it with "tar -zxvf RT2500-Linux-STA-1.4.6.4.tar.gz". I haven't had any luck building it, though. If you need help with this, ping me and I can look into it more.