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Cannot get wireless connection with mandrake 10 using dell laptop

hello, I am brand new to linux and don't know how to do anything with it, I have mandrake 10 installed and am using kde, anyway I have a dell laptop inspiron 1150 with a wireless card, the card is one or both of these (I'm not exactly sure what the broadcom bit is):

Dell Wireless WLAN 1350 WLAN Mini-PCI card
Broadcom 440x10/100 Integrated controller Rev. A04

under kde I went into network config and chose wireless conection from a list containing adsl, cable, dailup etc. then it gives me a long list and asks me to choose one. I don't even know what exactly I'm coosing here, if it is a driver why can't linux prompt me for a disk? Anyway if someone can please help it would be great also bear in mind that if anyone advises me to run a command you'll have to tell me how and where from to do that, I am seriously new, all I can do is point and click. I want to stop using windows but until I get my internet up it is a royal pain since I have to reboot to windows every 5 mins to get info online. Also worth mentioning, one of the choices in said list is bcom 4400 or somethign similar, I tried to choose it but the screen just flickered and went back to prompting me to choose again so I assume it is not the right one. Thanks.

do a search here for broadcom dell, there seems to be many people with problems with that particular setup (hell, for $20 buy a cheap prism2 wireless card, then check out the wiki on installing them)

The easy way to do wireless in Linux is to go to www.linuxant.com and buy ($29 I think) a license to use their driver wrapper. This lets you actually use the Windows XP driver from Dell to make your wireless work. It is a simple web based interface with step by step instructions at the linuxant website. There are also free ways to do it, but they require a bit of mastery of the command line. There is a program called ndiswrapper which works in a manner very similar to linuxant except it is a bit harder to configure. It is also a driver wrapper that lets you use the Windows driver under Linux. I have used Linuxant and ndiswrapper and I know they will both work on the Broadcom chipset because I have that chipset in my laptop. From the driver list for wireless try the "wireless adapters with direct pci interface"....that one might work, too.

I'm running SuSE9.1 on the same laptop as yours and the wireless works perfectly. I used the ndiswrapper -free- and it goes in relatively easily. I also did a little howto for newbies detailing the procedure. Let me know if you would like a copy. It's in pdf, txt, html, sxw formats, your choice.

yes please by all means send me a copy, pdf is fine
surlymike@woecanada.ca
thanks

I would also like that free ndis-wrapper info please. You can send it to carlpriestley-at-yahoo.com. PDF format would be fine.

thank you in advance.

cpnewb

i also get the card to enable on boot but is has to be set to on in the bios first. email me if you still have problems setting up ndiswrapper

I just noticed, my HowTo can be found in the Networking Tutorial section. Read and enjoy wireless on Linux.
I will take questions and comments. I would especially like to know the differences between SuSE and other distros so I could make it kinda generic.

RA