Mepis saved the day!
 

Well, I gotta say this site rocks. Just browsing around and Im pretty impressed. I found a review of Mepis and downloaded it, and am using it right now to save files of my cousins infected xp box. Its kind of slow running off the cd (but hey what can you expect right?) and so far I like it.

I know its supposed to support wireless. Does anyone know how well it works with netgear's usb wifi attachments? Im going to add a review for mepis after I actually install it on the HDD.

it should work fine but if u have any problems these forums and the mepis forums are a great help when u need it.

you may run into problems with wpa - and if you aren't running wpa you probably aren't very secure. there are work arounds, but i decided to get a wireless bridge that supports wpa (a wireless point that allows you to plug a computer (printer, etc...) in with ethernet cable and it is none the wiser.

i have read that there is a way to get wpa working, but i haven't investigated it.

if you get it working, do report back here - others would benefit greatly.

I've gotten WPA working with my Atheros Mini-pci card using the following howto http://www.mepis.org/node/8958 I'm not sure if it will work with other wireless devices, but it should assuming you change the line in /usr/bin/wpa that reads: ifup ath0 & wpa_supplicant -D madwifi -i ath0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf & dhclient. You need to replace "madwifi" with the proper module tag for your card. You will also have to change the references to "ath0" to whatever your wireless device uses (wlan, eth etc.)

I am a newbie in the world of wireless. What is the downside of wep? Is it all bad?

WEP can be owned in minutes...the keys are static. If you just have to use WEP change the passphrase frequently

dude, forget WEP... Unless your neighbors are 1337 Haxorz and you are careless with what you share on your PC then its pretty unlikely that something bad would happen without WEP...

nothing: everyone sees your open folders. easier to hack and control box.

wep: someone has to target you for hacking to get to your shares, but, if they do, it isn't hard for someone with skillz. a little more difficult to hack box.

wpa/psk: is much better than wep. not bulletproof (nothing is), but very difficult to hack.

wpa/psk is the best way to go. you can get a network bridge and avoid all the hassle of setting up wpa/psk on your linux box, although it can be done with th eright hardware.