Please don't tell me this has to do with ndiswrapper.

Okay, so I originally had Mepis on my laptop, which was great because, while it sucked UI-wise, it ran my integrated wireless card perfectly. However, I wanted a more mainstream distribution, so I picked up OpenSUSE 10.2. However, it won't recognize my wireless card. Now, I know it works, becuase of Mepis, but I have two issues I really am bumping against.
1) I don't know the make and the model. It would be really cool if there was a way to find this out, and also the exact interface that the wireless device connected to my motherboard (its integrated into the computer)
2) How to get it up and running.

Thanks ahead of time

THE VBIMP

ok first what is the model of your laptop?
once you know the make and model head over to the website
first WINDOWS drivers
Go into Yast then Software>Software Management
Type in ndiswrapper. accept.
it will ask for the cd so install using cd
dl the windows drivers or load them from cd whatever
copy them to your home directory
go into console
change to the directory where the .inf file using cd (ie cd /home/YOURUSERNAME/Folder where inf is)
then type ndiswrapper -i <filename.inf>
once driver installed
type modprobe ndiswrapper press enter
then type iwconfig
k great.
then in the bottom right look for the wireless in the knetworkmanager
click an available wireless network shown and it will connect!

I guessed you missed that part ?

Post the output of $ lspci

noooo! it worked so... effortlessly on MEPIS!
Well, i still want to stick with SUSE. and i found the same tut as above (thanks, btw) on the SUSE site, with screens and everything.
I will definately give this a whirl. thanks all

I've played with mepis quite a bit and I'm a SuSE user with ndiswrapper and the broadcom native drivers (i played with both) mepis comes with ndiswrapper already installed and a bunch, I think 8 or so drivers already loaded for ndiswrapper, one being the broadcom driver so it works right away ... ndiswrapper is NOT installed by default in SuSE so you need to install it and configure it then your wireless will work fine ... one difference I noticed is if you use the native linux broadcom driver it will only work in "b" mode (11MB) but using ndiswrapper and the windows driver it will use "g" (54MB) connection .... both are real easy to setup/configure ...

good luck!!!!

okay
i found the driver, but its an exe. Anyway to get to the .inf file it is going to install?
Also, i put it both it and the newest version of ndiswrapper on my thumbdrive, and now that isnt being identified by the system.

most times the "exe" file is just an executable zip file so what I do is rename the exe to zip then right click and extract ... if your thumb drive isn't showing up you could try to go to the /media directory ... it should be there ...

Thumbdrives don't work in Suse for me, either, unless I'm logged in as root.