I'm using Linux for quite some time now, and I'm very pleased with SLED 10 on my laptop. But the WiFi configuration is something I just don't get. Right now it's working, so this thread is more for understanding this thing.

The adapter I have is a Linksys PCMCIA adapter in combination with ndiswrapper. After running the following command in a terminal it's working fine in the terminal:

iwconfig wlan0 key restricted <wep key>

iwconfig wlan0 essid "<ESSID>"

dhclient wlan0

I can use ping and it's all fine, but X applications in Gnome (GAIM, Firefox etc.) refuse to work (while it works in a terminal!!) strange eh? Only after using the "Connect to Other Wireless Network..." option in the Gnome Network Manager aplet they work.

OKay, today I reinstalled SLED on my notebook. And you can choose to use the Networkmanager Aplet for network configuration or the old fashioned way. This time, I choosed the second option. And now, everything works as expected.