I've got a laptop successfully running Mandrake 9.2 RC2 and, while I'd *like* to be able to get it on my school's wireless network, I'm a little afraid to tackle the setup unless I know it will work.

First of all, from what I've read, my network card (Netgear WAB501) is incompatible with Linux; is this true?

Secondly, I don't know about the PCMCIA support for Linux on my laptop, and I'm not sure how to test it (since the only PCMCIA device I have might be incompatible with Linux). I know that, when you insert a PCMCIA card, "something" has to "know" it is there and start the relevent drivers/software. Also, when you want to remove PCMCIA hardware, you have to tell that "something" that you want to remove it so that it can unload the drivers/software. What mechanisim does Linux have for handling all of this? (In Windows XP, all of that happens in a little icon in the system tray.)

Thirdly, I know that, at least in Windows, each wireless card must have some software that sits between the hardware and the networking layer that is responsible for establishing a physical connection to a WAP. To the best of my knowledge, this software must be specific to the network card being used. What software is available in Linux that is analogous to this?

On top of all that, when connecting to our wireless network, our school requires us to use VPN software (specifically, Cisco VPN software). Although I'm pretty sure they have a link to a Linux VPN client on my school's website, I'm still unsure if it will work with the wireless software on Linux.

So, basically, in order for me to get my wireless network setup, I'll need to have all of the following able to run:

1. PCMCIA support
2. Hardware support for the specific PCMCIA device
3. Some mechanisim to handle insertion and removal of the specific PCMCIA device
4. "User space" software to interface with the PCMCIA device in order to setup a physical connection with a WAP
5. VPN support

I don't know if I'm making this too complicated, or if my understanding of this is even correct (I'm just using my knowledge of how this works in Windows to describe it). It just seems like there's a lot of "layers" to this process which must all be functional for this to work, and I'm not familiar enough with any of them (in Linux) to know how to tackle this setup.

Can anyone give me any tips or links to relevent documentation to help me in this? Also, if I need to be looking for a new wireless adapter, can somebody give some recommendations?

Thanks a lot!

my school also has this stupid cisco access points. and it requires the vpn client, but they havent tested it for linux evcer, just win32 and macs.

as for whether ur pcmcia wlan card will work, well, as long as u find a driver for the chipset of that card, it will. there are sites with the list of cards and their chipsets, and u only have to get drivers for them. i use a netgear wg511, so i know it uses a prismgt cipset, and i got the drivers for it, built the kernel, pcmcia, and then the drivers into it. and it works fine. but i havent yet connected to the cisco points here cos i dont know exactly how to, but i just mailed them yday asking for instructions (although most of the time, the standard answer is "we dont support linux").

http://pcmcia-cs.sourceforge.net/ftp/SUPPORTED.CARDS

http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_.../Wireless.html

also,

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...003/02/2/45251