Best Wireless Card for Red Hat 9?
 

Hello,

I just purchased a used Toshiba Satellite Pro 4200 and I plan to install Red Hat 9 on it. I am looking to get a wireless card for the laptop. What wireless card do you suggest getting?

Thanks

Dave

Do *not* get a D-Link. D-Link do not support Linux and will never do so. The drivers that *are* available through other channels (acx100 for the DWL-650+ or the RealTek half-and-half binary drivers for the 610) are really dodgy and do not work very well. Trust me on this one.

Look for a card based on the PRISM2 or PRISM2_5 chipsets. These are fully supported in Linux - heck, they even allow you to use it as an access point. :)

Other supported cards are based on Lucent/Orinoco chipsets.

I have a D-Link DWL-650+ card (don't ask why!). It sucks.

hw

what brand names are these chipset cards

Various. Ask the salesman, or check the technical specifications or documents on cards you're interested in.

The Cisco-based cards are sold by (drum roll, please)...Cisco. :) The AiroNet 350 is supposed to work well, same goes for the 340 I believe. Lucent/Orinico cards were sold as Lucent but are now sold as Agere. Linksys have a few cards based on the prism2 and prism2_5 chipsets and those are ace.

hw

thanks for that quick reply, I have been having major problems with WPC11 Ver 4. Aironet, D-Link, I am at my wits end so I am going to give Netgear401NA and your suggestions the last shot, will let you know how it works

I have the 16 bit NetGear401NA...works like a charm

Are all Netgear401NA 16bit and I hope I can find one...If netgear is smart, they would keep this card and sell it to Linux lovers...

Well nobody ever accused Hardware mnfgs of being smart...

I believe all the 16bit cards are based on the orinoco chipset and should work. I do know the 32bit cards come with 3 different chipsets and one is not supported. It can be difficult to detect until you get home. Most b protocol cards should work...but sometimes the mnfgr pulls a fast one.

I always just buy from places with liberal return policies. It sucks but for linux users it is sometimes neccessary :)

good luck

BTW if I had my druthers I would buy an Orinoco Gold 802.11b

What about an Asus?

i am trying to run an Asus on Mandrake 9.1 i dont get a thing? any ideas...?

can you be more specific?

integrated? chipset? wireless/wired? model?

DON'T get:
Netgear MA521
Blitzz 612
Linksys WPC11b ver. 4

All these use the realtek 8180 chip, and are very dodgy at best.

Linksys WPC11b ver 3 was plug and play on my RH9 system, too bad it wasn't my card lol.

MEEP!! I already have an MA521, and have been trying hard as hell to get it to work on my FreeBSD 5.1 system...can you give me any information you have on this one??

I bought an orinoco gold pcmicia card that works great with RH9... you just need to install the new pcmcia-cs drivers and linux-wlan-ng...

Google for Linux will get you the RPM's...

Best case scenario - can you return it for an orinoco type card?
Netgear MA401 works nicely.

If not , go to Realtek's site and d/l the drivers for the 8180 chip based cardbus cards. I believe there are 2 of them for linux. Problem is, part of the driver is a pre-compiled binary and it's not open source, and it's VERY specific to which kernel it runs on. Realtek AFAIK hasn't answered any questions about how it was compiled, although many have asked lol.

Search this LUG and others for realtek 8180 and linksys WPC11b v4, as it's possibly the most common card with that chip. There are many people who go tthis to work, heck I have one working now, but under "mysterious' circumstances lol.

Of course, how much of this will apply to BSD is unknown...good luck on this .

ive had good luck with orinoco cards