Hi, all,

Linux newbie w/ reasonable amount of BSD/HPUX/AIX experience.

I just received my first Linux machine, a brand-spanking-new Athlon 64 running Fedora 6.0 64-bit version (x86_64). It has a wireless lan card with a Realtek chipset in it (an Encore something-or-other), so I'm trying to compile the rtl818x drivers from Prism54. They're not compiling.

Before I get to the specifics, have any of you experienced this before?

The details: unfortunately, I'm receiving scads of warning-level messages and a few E-levels, and consequently get no .o files. The warnings are largely about C syntax issues, like "ISO C90 forbids mixed declarations and code" and "passing argument 2 from queue_delayed_work from incompatible pointer type." The errors are also C syntax issues: "'INIT_WORK' undeclared". "Macro 'INIT_WORK' passed 3 variables but takes only 2." etc.

Also, I'm missing a "linux/config.h" file. I run a find for config.h and find several in different locations, but which is the right one?

My experience tells me it's unwise to ignore syntax warnings like these. They seem to me a sign that either the drivers are only half-written, the code was written for a different version of gcc than I'm running, or I'm pointing to a completely wrong set of libraries. Maybe all 3. And of course, I can't go anywhere with E-levels.

When I posted my first pass at this question last week, some experienced user opined that he though the rtl818x drivers were pretty solid. That does not seem to be the case from where I sit, but I'm open to opinions.

Does the fact that I'm running a 64-bit OS have anything to do with my woes? I would gladly revert to 32-bit if it would avoid the crap I'm dealing with here.

I'll try anything, including buying a different wireless PCI card that's supported in the Fedora 6 kernel. Anybody know which cards would fit that description?

Thanks for your help, in advance.

Phil W.