Not totally new...but here's my intro
 

This is kind of generic, but also gets specific towards the end.
Hi,
I got started about two years ago with Linux(Fedora 12). My neighbor across the street (Lawrence) saw me loading my old computer (XP) into my car. It had crashed the hard drive and I was giving up and taking it to a professional to look at. He offered me an old computer he had but said..."it has Linux on it though." So that's how I got started with Linux.

Back in the day' I was pretty good with DOS and batch files, and QuickBasic so I thought what the heck why not try it out.-OK that's my intro-

So I read a lot and since the rest of my house was using XP based machines, I had to figure out how to install/enable Samba so the rest of the house could use my printer. Got that working after a couple days. Wrote my first scripts to automate starting/stopping the SMB stuff. I was having fun, but the learning curve is pretty steep. Somewhere along the way, the Samba quit working and I could never get it going again for some unknown reason. I'm sure it was my fault because I'm always trying things out and sometimes I should leave well enough alone.

So I've been happy with Linux,but the interests I have AutoCad/QuickBasic forced me to install
dossbox to let me continue on with my projects.

Now the specific part...
I moved recently and the new house has a large lot with a detached garage. Ethernet wasn't going to do it anymore so I ventured into "wireless" networking via a "Belkin USB" device with a 'RTL8192su' chip in it. The Fedora 12 couldn't recognize the device so browsing for help had to be done on my wife's XP computer.

After much scrounging around this and other helpful sites I went to the RealTeK site and searched for Linux drivers. I found this tarball...
ftp://WebUser:wK9xBuD5@208.70.202.21...0.20120405.zip

I studied the information files and ran the script that was included to simplify the config and make and install stuff, but the script kept failing right after the make clean part.

I got frustrated at that point and blew away Fedora and installed XP so I could use the wireless USB device. That was a real dumb move since I also lost all my personal stuff when windows installed. Amazing what I'll do sometimes when I get mad.

So now I'm on windows and reading Linux forums to help me get back to reality.

OK...I'm done now except I bought a 32GB thumb drive today in the hopes I could figure out how to make a live image thumb drive with a more recent release of Fedora.

Thanks,
Rich

Hi there,

that's the right order. :-)

Excuse me for not getting specific myself, but ... Fedora 12 is more than three years old, support for it has long expired. You really should consider upgrading to an up-to-date version (oh, sorry, reading on I see that you're not using it any more). Current one is Fedora 19. And there's a good chance that a new version will support your Realtek Wifi chip out of the box.
Fedora is available as a Live CD, so you can try it without breaking anything before you finally decide to install it.

Oh, by the way: How far is that garage away from the house? A wired connection isn't an option?

No! :-o
Lucky you at least chose a decent, halfway usable Windows, and not Windows 7 or 8.

But let's look at the positive aspect: That means you've got nothing to lose when you try some up-to-date Linux distro.

There's a program called Unetbootin, available as a Linux and as a Windows version. This program takes a regular ISO image file (which is intended to become a Live CD or DVD) and creates a bootable Live USB drive from it.
You could've picked a smaller USB drive as well - 1GB might've just been enough, but the smallest I've seen being sold recently are 4GB. And they're a lot cheaper. Typical retail prices in Germany are ~5EUR (about 7US$) for a 4GB, ~15EUR for a 32GB thumb drive.

[X] Doc CPU

Hey Doc,
Thanks for the information. I'll try it out here soon and post the success or not here.

Also the garage is about 50 feet away
from the house and I'd have to dig a trench for wires.
Rich

Hi there,

... or put up an overhead beam, if it had been a matter of only 10 feet or so. But not across 50 feet.

[X] Doc CPU

Made some progress
 

DOC(x),
Installed unetbootin and retrieved an image of fedora 19. Chose the hard drive boot option and rebooted. The menu popped up and I chose 'unetbootin' option for the operating system to load. All went well albeit, slow until the fedora splash screen ended with an emergency 'dracut' shell. The error(s) were related to not finding certain files. Rebooted into XP after that so no harm done there. Any ideas?
Thanks,
Rich

"DOS and batch files, and QuickBasic" Useful skills.

There are three ways to get wireless to work in linux. One is the distro supports it. Two is you find a linux driver and add it in. Three is to use a windows driver under ndiswrapper.

Almost every modern linux can easily run on a live usb just as if it were a real hard drive. The install may be tricky so I suggest these steps.

Power down box and remove ac plug.
Remove power to internal drive.
Install usb flash and boot to bios. Does bios see the usb as a hard drive choice?
Boot to a live cd/dvd and install your OS choice to the usb.
From then on you can select boot by bios or F key boot menu.

There are many distro's that could also be installed by a hybrid iso or usb image. They sometimes have space issues so I prefer to use the suggest method.

i find the fedora live-usb creator more stable.

also photorec mite be helpful in retrieving your files.