How To Get The Driver Situation Working
 

Hi everyone.

I'm Liam, and I havent done much in the way of messing with computers in a long time. However, I just got a new laptop, so I decided to install Linux, mostly just for fun, which Im new at. So I got Mandriva KDE 07.

Now getting it installed was painless, and I like it a lot. This issue is with drivers. For everything I want to set up or do, it seems to want to connect to the internet to get the driver or something, but I can't because I have no driver for my network card.

So I found what I THINK is the Linux driver for the Dell Wireless 1390 WLAN Mini-Card, which is what I have. But now I have no way of getting it into Linux. I cant do file-system sharing because it wont let me install it because it cant get online. And when I burn said driver to a CD and point Linux to it, it comes up blank, even when Im using the utility that looks for Windows drivers.

So now Im stuck. I have no idea how to make this work. I looked in the documentation and cant really find anything useful. Im sure theres a simple solution, and I just dont know what Im doing yet. Is there?

Thanks,
LZ