Best Linux(slackware 12) compatible usb wireless adapter dongle
 

Hey all,

I've just set up my first wireless network for use with my slackware equipped laptop, and I'm loving it, even though it was quite a process coaxing my somewhat obscure wireless card to play nicely.

I love it so much, in fact, that I would like to throw a USB wireless adapter dongle in my desktop, also running slackware.

I was wondering if anybody had any suggestions for me as far as which ones play with linux. Any that have good driver support out of the box, or are just easy to setup in general?

I found an el-cheapo USB wireless dongle with the name "My Essentials" (I THINK some kind of Belkin sub-brand or something) that was supported out of the box (starting with Kernel 2.6.21.5, if I remember correctly.) Not sure if you're in the States or not, but got it at Office Max. The PCMCIA port in my (ancient) Compaq laptop shot craps, and I was looking for something really cheap that worked with Linux. I was pleasantly surprised that it did ;)

Good Luck!

When you say "supported out of the box," you mean that you didn't have to load any drivers, or use ndiswrapper, or anything?? I cannot get my internal wireless to work in Linux, and was thinking about a USB device, but didn't know if they would work at all, or would require major trial and error configuration or the crap shoot of finding drivers and making them work.

Right - I didn't have to use ndiswrapper - the adapter was recognized by the kernel without any other configuration needed, other than the configurations needed to attach to my network using WPA encrypion via wpa_supplicant.