Atheros AR5212...which distros support it??

_UnPrEdictAbLe_ · 09-25-2004, 02:10 AM

Hi,

I have a Atheros AR5212 802.11 g 54 Mbps wireless lan card.

I am able to use it successfully on a FC2 2.6.7 with

atrpms
madifi
kernel-module-madwifi-2.6.7

packages installed.

But this solution seems FC2 specific. I am going to try out Debian Suse and Madrake in a short while. I just wanted to know if all these will also be able to get my card working???

regards
unpredictable

crozewski · 04-15-2005, 10:26 AM

nothingnothing

PeteBourner · 04-15-2005, 10:36 AM

I have a Netgear WG511T pc-card, which has the AR5212 chipset. My experience with distros is as follows:

1) Mandrake 10.1 - this detected the card during installation and tried to install madwifi to handle it, but this failed for some reason (can't remember the error message). I tried a few things post-install but couldn't get it to work. However, I didn't try that hard as :
2) SuSE 9.2 - this picked it up during install, and everything worked perfectly from there on
3) Gentoo - again, no problem, just emerge 'madwifi-driver'
4) Knoppix 3.7 - works okay if you select the 2.4 kernel, and use 'modprobe ath_pci' to install the atheros module. Can't install if use the 2.6 kernel (ath_pci not found)
5) Mepis 3.3 - same as Knoppix

So overall, you should be fine with SuSE. Also, as Knoppix and Mepis are debian-based, Debian will probably work ok as well, but you may need to use the 2.4 kernel.

_UnPrEdictAbLe_ · 04-26-2005, 01:05 AM

Okay.

Instead of Debian.. I tried Kubuntu. It also detected the card and worked fine without 'much' trouble. The distribution overall is good but KDE in it is highly unstable... each and every app crashes. I am waiting for FC4.

I specifically hate to work with 2.4 kernels... was any debian released with 2.6??? I have somewhat learnt to deal with debian (through kubuntu)... so I would love to try it out.

Half_Elf · 04-26-2005, 09:37 AM

The hardware support is NOT relative to the distro. Any distro can support any hardware supported by another distribution. The hardwares support is in the kernel or (sometime) in some external drivers that are distro independant. There is nothing preventing you to upgrade your system to a newer kernel from kernel.org if you wish to.
My debian is running 2.6.11.7, compiled from scratch, and any distro could do the same.

In fact, don't expect very recent hardware to work out of box without you needing to push it a bit

Atheros is in a pretty beta stage so far, there will probably be a newer drivers every couple of days/weeks (depending the programmers) you might want to try... distribution can't upgrade their package that fast, if you want these, you will probably have to get your own habd dirty and compile from source

Jiggz · 04-26-2005, 09:40 AM

I am currently working with Kubuntu trying to get the same network card going... How did you do it? I can't access the control center to enable it because everytime I log in as admin it takes me somewhere useless... What did you do to get your card going ???

_UnPrEdictAbLe_ · 04-26-2005, 02:38 PM

Hmm...

actually we cannot logon as root in Kubuntu. I am talking about Kubuntu 5.4.

Anyways, see if your username is there in the sudoers file...
./etc/sudoers

and then the /etc/network/interfaces.... i wrote this...

Code:

# Used by ifup(8) and ifdown(8). See the interfaces(5) manpage or
# /usr/share/doc/ifupdown/examples for more information.

auto ath0
iface lo inet loopback
iface ath0 inet dhcp

and then....

$ sudo /etc/init.d/network restart

and it worked.

I have seen others to have just gone into settings--> network.... and just enable the device in admin mode. What I found out was that if you install in "expert mode" ... the admin mode thing just doesnt work.... so we need to do it this konsole way... maybe in your case the graphical thing will work... and it would be a matter of a mouse click...

Do contact for more help.

_UnPrEdictAbLe_ · 04-26-2005, 02:44 PM

hey elf...

Actually you are right that it should certainly work everywhere if you try to recompile and patch n stuff..... and I've done it in the OLDEN days... but then... these days I believe... the Linux ditros have become grown up enough to handle all things in packages and easy installs.

Like I mentioned, that there is a easy rpm method for the card in FC2.... and Kubuntu.. Suse 9.1 onwards... autodetect it.... my question was specifically to ask whether there exists a similar thing for Debian and Mandrake... for the chipset AR5212 ??

NYCmitch25 · 05-12-2005, 08:28 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by _UnPrEdictAbLe_
hey elf...

Actually you are right that it should certainly work everywhere if you try to recompile and patch n stuff..... and I've done it in the OLDEN days... but then... these days I believe... the Linux ditros have become grown up enough to handle all things in packages and easy installs.

Like I mentioned, that there is a easy rpm method for the card in FC2.... and Kubuntu.. Suse 9.1 onwards... autodetect it.... my question was specifically to ask whether there exists a similar thing for Debian and Mandrake... for the chipset AR5212 ??

THese do to:

i) Kanotix
ii) Knoppix 3.8.2 (and 3.6 but *not* 3.8.1)
iii) P.H.L.A.K.

imdeemvp · 05-20-2005, 09:35 PM

Fedora does too....

crozewski · 05-21-2005, 02:32 AM

nothingnothing