I recently purchased a Linksys WUSB54GC wireless USB stick. I have a wireless router at home I use for a Vista laptop and I'm trying to enable my antique linux box to use a wireless connection instead of running wires everywhere.

Naturally Cisco (Linksys) only provides an install disk for Windows based boxes so I'm trying to figure out how to get the driver into my linux system.

I looked over the install CD and found a driver in an X86 folder named

rt2870.inf

So I figure the chipset in my USB stick is a Ralink 2870. Please correct me if I'm wrong in making that deduction.

A bit of searching led me to the Ralink driver website, where they have a linux support section, including a driver for the 2870 chip.

http://www.opendrivers.com/driver/29...-download.html

So far, so good. I downloaded the driver for the 2870 USB chipset and got the file:

2009_0820_RT2870_Linux_STA_V2.2.0.0.tar.bz2

Problem is I'm still quite the n00b at all this manual driver installing routine.

What steps do I need to take to get the driver out of the tar file and into the system so I can use the USB wireless?

FYI. I run PCLOS on a ~10 year old 700 MHz AMD Athlon system that originally had Win98 on it.

Please be as specific on the instructions as you can. I'm a point-n-click kinda guy. I'm sure it will take me several iterations of Q&A to get to the finish line.

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

1) bunzip2 <filename>.tar.bz2, run in a terminal window, to decompress the file (it was compressed using bz2).

2) move the .tar file into a seperate folder. you may have only one file in the tar archive, you may have many. putting the tarball in an empty folder makes it easier to keep track of which files belong in the archive. it's possible the tarball contains a binary driver and instructions what to do with the binary. It's also possible you may have source code files that must be compiled before installation is possible.

3) cd into the folder containing the tar file. Untar the archive: tar -xvf <filename>.tar. Look for a README or INSTALL file which should give you instructions.