I'm pondering getting a wifi usb stick to plug either into a laptop or my desktop machine. I'm after something that'll work under Ubuntu 6.06LTS, and 7.10. Doesn't need to be anything fancy, just something cheap and cheerful and not too much hassle to setup. Any recommendations?

Ta, Dave.

I have a Belkin and a Linksys. The basic features work on both. They are both available at Walmart. The Belkin is about $10 cheaper than the Linksys.

Jeff

are the able to do ad hoc?
what drivers are you using with the belkin??

Setting up most USB devices in Linux is a pain.

I recommend a wired to wireless bridge. This is also known as an wireless access point. You will need to setup a static IP address and a wired NIC.

I've only tried a cheap Zonet 2502 (or something very close to that) USB wireless thing..that model didn't have native Linux drivers, though the 2500 model (if I'm right; you can check that with a web search if you like) should have. For the one I had I simply installed the Windows drivers trough NDISwrapper, and after that it worked like a charm. Not a big deal - for Ubuntu there was a graphical NDISwrapper interface with point-and-click driver installation (the driver disk comes with the stick, or you can download the files from the internet). After the NDISwrapper drivers were installed (about one minute work), Ubuntu was happy to work with them, and the Network applet at the Gnome panel allowed me to select my wireless network, click on it, type a WPA password and connect without trouble.

It's not the easiest one I guess - easiest would be if the thing had native drivers that are mature enough not to have major flaws or lack of functionality in them - but it worked quite easily nevertheless.

I have got a D-Link DWL-G122 that I'm using with ndiswrapper and a windows driver. Setting it up was everything but a pain. Just plug it in and install the driver.

It is quite bulky though so it's nothing I would use for a laptop.

I'd recommend a USB Wireless device that uses the ralink chipset..

http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/net/wireless/cards.html

http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com/wiki/index.php/Hardware

No need to deal with ndiswrapper if you purchase hardware that has support in Linux...

Personally I don't care for the limited range of USB Wireless devices.. the ASUS brand ralink PCMCIA card I bought was $25.00 from New Egg.. Took about 2 minutes to get working in Debian.
a desktop card should be about the same price..