After a little mishap with Linux about a year ago, I have decided to return. However, one thing that is bothering me is how exactly to install the drivers for my USB wireless Netgear MA101.

Now, I have the drivers on the cd I received with it, but I imagine that these will be no use on Linux!

I have Mandrake 10.0, SuSe, Gentoo and Slackware (all downloaded versions) on CD. The problem is it seems because the downloads were free, they won't contain the drivers for such commercial devices.

I am prepared to download the Linux drivers, the problem is I am not sure if I need to burn the files in a certain fashion or with a certain peice of software. Once that is completed, how exactly am I meant to take the files off the CD and use them?

Now, I imagine several of you are probably thinking to yourselves what stupid questions these are: Well, yes, you're right I am pretty much completely new to Linux, and installing it is already a pain the arse for me!

Any help whatsoever, whether it be simple hints or a full step by step guide if you're feeling generous will all be gratefully received: as soon as I get my copy of Linux online, life will be much easier for me, so please help a poor, confused soul!

Is that the card that uses the atmel chipset?
If your card is PCI, run lspci and look for something that identifies the chipset in your card. If it's usb, plug it in and type dmesg and look for chipset output. Once we know what chipset you're using, we can go from there.

Ok, I have installed Slackware 10, managed to get it into runtime 4 (i.e. a graphical desktop) and "installed" some drivers I found (unpacked, used tar command, make all in folder...) although nothing seems to have shown up so far.

As for dmesg, the only relevance to chipset was for my onboard SIS gfx. The only info I can make out on usb devices are simply the ports and the fact that they are not claimed by any drivers.