im a complet noob to linux and slackware and wanted to try it out since i heard many good things about it. i never used it before and have no clue about anything. a complete noob. what i need help with is to get my wireless internet working. i use a WMP54GS and i know my network name and WPA password. can someone guide me through on how to do this??? i dont even know where to start. its a completely new world for me. thx

A good place to start would be lspci, which will tell you what chipset the device is actually using. Linksys usually uses several different chipsets over the course of many revisions in their products, and there isn't an easy way for me to tell you which driver you need.

Once you have the right driver, run "iwconfig" to get a list of all the network cards, and whether they have wireless extensions enabled. That'll tell you if the driver is properly installed, and also what device to use for the configuration.

iwconfig is also what you need to know for setting up the card for your wireless net. "iwconfig {DEVICE} essid {SSID} key {KEY}". Wait a few seconds, and then run "ifconfig {DEVICE} up", and then "dhcpcd {DEVICE}".

thx for u help but im a total noob. i downloaded the slackware book and read about iwconfig but dont know how to start it. oh, i also have the drivers for my pci card extracted with the .inf files and stuff like that.

Sounds like you might want to start here...

Introduction to Linux

Are those the Linux drivers for your network card or the windows drivers?

Netizen

video drivers??? i wanna install drivers for my pci wireless card.

Sorry, I had video drivers on the brain yesterday...

What distro are you using?

Did you follow the instructions from killerbob?

When you downloaded the drivers, did you follow the readme or install file on how to install the drivers?

I have read some people have had success using this
http://sourceforge.net/projects/rt2400

It sounds like you'll have to use NDISWRAPPER or DRIVERLOADER to get it up and running.

They both do the same thing. One is free (ndiswrapper), one is not (driverloader). They use the Windows Network API to run your card. This way, you can use the Windows drivers that came with your card. I'm not positive, but it looks as if your card isn't supported under linux (no linux drivers), so you'll have to use one of those two programs above.

I use driverloader on my laptop and it works great. You get a 30-day trial with driverloader, and in my expierence, it is MUCH easier to setup than ndiswrapper. Being that you are a "noob", as you say, you might want to opt for trying the trial of driverloader. If it works and you don't mind forking out $19.95, you could just get the full version (activation license). You won't have to re-install or re-configure anything; just enter your license code that they give you after you buy it.

Post back if you have any problems with driverloader. I'd be more than happy to walk you thru it if you need any assistance.

thx for all the replies. im thinking slackware is too hard for me so i switched to ubuntu to get a feel for linux first. but i still have to get my internet working there. ive read a lot about ndiswrapper before posting and i also get most of it except i use wpa and it gets confusing there. if i had internet, id spend much more time in linux than windwos.