Linux and Network card compatbility, will any network card work ?

MrMark · 02-11-2007, 09:17 PM

G'day

I just finshed buliding my own linux system from scratch using the LFS book on an old pentium 2 system I had laying around. It doesn't have a network card in it, so i'm gonna go buy one.

I dont know that much about linux yet, so I want know if any type of network will work happly with linux, or if only particular types/brands of network cards work. I'm on a normal 100mbps Ethernet home network.

Cheers

elmr007 · 02-11-2007, 09:51 PM

just about ANYTHING is good.

MS3FGX · 02-11-2007, 09:51 PM

I wouldn't say any card would work. Something like a brand new gigabit card or some other relatively exotic device might have some trouble, but beyond that you should be fine.

I would say that 90% of your average PCI NICs will work right out of the box. The ones that don't work right away might have some binary drivers kicking around too, so it would be quite a trick to get a standard NIC that doesn't work at all.

You should feel totally confident buying a standard NIC from one of the standard brands, like 3Com.

reddazz · 02-11-2007, 10:31 PM

Usually ethernet cards with realtek or via rhine chipsets work very well with Linux, BSD and Solaris.

MrMark · 02-12-2007, 06:35 PM

coolies, Got a new network today, plugged it in, messed around with some stuff in /etc/ and now i can ping other computers on my network by IP address, but not name

Thinkning its because its a windows network and so hasn't got a nameserver. Will do some digging

Thanks for the replies

wildar · 02-12-2007, 06:50 PM

Can edit /etc/hosts and insert IP and name.
Example:
127.0.0.1 localhost
192.168.1.11 computer1
192.168.1.12 computer2
192.168.1.13 computer3

If you want, you can also modify a hosts file in Windows. XP keeps it c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc

And if you're really curious, you could configure your new linux system to be a DNS server.

MS3FGX · 02-12-2007, 08:17 PM

Quote:

Thinkning its because its a windows network and so hasn't got a nameserver. Will do some digging

Yes, that is the issue. Windows machines use broadcasting to figure out each other's names, which Linux does not do.

Samba does allow you to do this, you can use a Samba plugin to resolve hostnames in place of DNS, if you wanted.