I'm new to linux and am wondering if there is a specfic package or combination of packages I could install that would allow any wireless card to work with any version of linux I'm using?

I have a linksys wmp54gs v1.1 pci card and using Centos5. Searching Google and other forums,

I have yet to find anything specfic that would give me a staged process with installing or configuring this card for this OS.

There is a wealth of information on wireless and I've tried several approaches that resulted in the re-installation of this OS on several occasions.

That is only to say I have no idea what I'm doing and its difficult to weed through what "I" need in order to accomplish this task.

Again, I am new to linux... many thanks to anyone that will point me in the right direction.

Have you tried searching on wmp54gs here on LQ? Here is one of the several relevant threads I found.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hlight=wmp54gs

Could you post the wireless card line from lspci please. I think these are Broadcom cards, but that will tell us definitively. If it is a Broadcom, you will need fw-cutter.

Yes you can!
Forget all the firmware cutters, atheros drivers etc etc.
It will take you ages just fo find out what chip is in your wifi card. Let alone they don't provide full functionality (most of them). Hope this gets better in the future.

I use ndiswrapper. This installs easily as an RPM or similar package if you have the more beginner friendly distros like Suse, Kubuntu, Mandriva etc (Iforgot a bunch of others here, I know...)

b) Find your Windows driver for your card from either the CD, the web or a working windows installation, what you want is an *.inf file that ususally lives with a *.sys file of similar name in the same folder. There might be different driver versions for each card, in general XP/2000 works better than Vista, avoid 64bit if you can.

c) command line as root (su):
ndiswrapper -i /path/to/*.inf
check with ndiswrapper -l
if it works then
ndiswrapper -m
modprobe ndiswrapper
(you might have to put this last line into a startscript later if it does not come up when booting , but that is another issue).

d) check with: dmesg | grep ndis
if you get some encouraging gobbledigook. your card likely be called something like wlan0.

e) The use your preferred wifi program to setup your WEP passwords etc. (You can also use iwconfig & dhcpcd on the command line if you so desire) I have Suse10.3 & KDE and I use the the Yast menus and Knetworkmanager or Kinternet, both works fine and I have setup several PC and Laptops with various PCI and USB cards with that.

Hope this makes sense so you don't need to suffer as I did only 3 years ago.

Husten.

A whole lot of changes have been made in the past 3 years.

Agree. Still needs a lot of dedication. Had an atheros in a notebook 6 months ago. I made the effort and spent ages fiddling with all the various options, old versions, new versions, true open source versions etc. No success. Turned out it was a different architecture chip that was from a different maker taken over and re-branded by atheros. Ndiswrapper as described above solved it in less then 20min incl. searching for the driver.
But honestly, my 3G UMTS modem,USB, just plug it in and start wvdial, knetworkman or whatever you use. It works. The driver sits in the kernel. Get there with wifi/wlan - then we are talking.


CHeers
husten

Ndiswrapper sucks in the strongest possible terms. Do not use it. You card works 100% natively in Linux with fwcutter and standard setup tools. Using Windows tools to run Linux is for suckers.

Your comment seems to be about religion, not about setting up Wifi.
Both approaches work. I believe mine is less complicated - but it is for the beginners to find out for themselves. If you can provide a few lines instead for the guy who started the thread be my guest.

Husten

P.S. I might have missed something, I tought fwcutter was for Broadcom chips only. So what would be the approach for my Speetouch 121g USB ?
Ta
Hu

"Ndiswrapper sucks in the strongest possible terms".

I would guess this poster was never stuck in the boonies trying to connect to a wpa wireless connection with Ralink linux drivers. I guess a linux guru would overcome this obstacle by spending a couple hours at the command line or writing a few pages of code.

For the rest of us, Ndiswrapper is a godsend.