I am new to Linux, well actually I come from Unix environment some 8 years back.

I have noticed that Linux has been heating up specially REDHAT 9 is getting very stable. But I am wondering if Wireless configurations are ever stable and Plug-and-Play on notebook computers. I want to buy a new notebook and intend to kick out Windows and Office since I am a loyal traitor of MS products primarily for cost reason.

I heard some folks do encounter difficulties after installing Linux without its onboard WiFi devices detected.

I can tell you that intel has developed kernel drivers for at least some of it's onboard wireless. My laptop has the ipw2200 wireless and it works flawlessly with the driver, and I know there is also a driver for the ipw2100 wireless. I'm not sure about intel's other wireless products (if there are any), but there are links to linux drivers on the intel website. I've heard of problems with other companies' wireless cards, linksys, netgear, etc. but I don't know the details.

Most (driverless) cards require you to use ndiswrapper, which can be pretty difficult to get working from what I hear.

Let me see if I understand correctly. So you are using a particular Linux I suppose it is Red Hat ?

So just a few brands of PCMCIA card are supported?

What it is like if say I buy a Fujitsu laptop with built in WiFi, then I install Red Hat 9 on top, removing Windows XP completely. Will I be able to use Wireless after the installation?

Red Hat 9 is no more. It's been superceded by Fedora Core. I won't derail the thread by listing the differences or the rationale behind the move, but RH 9 is not supported. The net to you is you'd be installing a distro with known vulnerabilities and no place to get fixes.

Check out distrowatch.org for features and comparisons. All Linuxes (sp?) are essentially the same under the covers. Some are better at hardware discovery and configuration, but most wireless cards can be made to work. The chipset of the wireless device is the determinig factor.

Before buying anything, find out what chipset the laptop's internal card uses and check it against the LinuxQuestions HCL or one of the many compatibility lists floating around.

Thanks 2Gnu! I really didn't know that I will have to be careful about the chipsets. I mean, this is not what we need to find out if we go for Windows.

You said that RHL 9 has been replaced, does it mean that Fedora is not supported anymore? I read a book about RHL 9 by Michael Jang published under the umbrella of Sybex. So it is out-dated already? Gosh! so quickly?