I recently decided to try Linux Mint 6 to see if it would work on my computer as a dual boot. It did not connect to the wireless network. I haven't installed it yet because I figured it would be easier just to use a different flavor of linux that did work with my wireless card (Atheros AR5007EG), but it did make some changes to my GRUB so that whenever I log in now it asks if I want to use Mint or Vista even though Mint isn't installed on the hard drive.

Since I don't have the necessary internet access in order to install the build-essential package that I would need to supposedly get wireless working, the only way to get it working would be to try to install wireless by getting the build-essential package by running the following commands with the CD in the drive:

sudo mount -o loop cd.iso /mnt/image
sudo rm /cdrom
sudo ln -s /mnt/image /cdrom
sudo apt-cdrom -m add

But can I run these commands if I haven't installed Mint on the hard drive and am still running it off the disk? I don't want to install it on the hard drive until I know wireless actually works, otherwise I will just use Xubuntu 8.04, which supposedly works with wireless right off the disk without messing around, HOWEVER, that would mean I have to now edit the GRUB somehow to dual boot with Xubuntu, not Mint.

Here are my questions:

- Can I try getting build-essential off of the Mint disk (is it even on the Mint 6.0 386i disk or just the Ubuntu disk?) using the above commands while running Mint off the disk or do I have to install Mint on the HD first?
- If not, how could would I go about getting build-essential from a flash drive, since I don't have internet access on the laptop (besides the wireless access I still have through Vista)?
- Would it be easier to just install Xubuntu 8.04, edit the GRUB to open that instead of Mint, and then use my new internet access to update the Xubuntu to Ubunutu or Mint (probably not, lol).
- Is there some other distro of Linux that anyone knows of that actually works with my wireless card?

Question #3 is somewhat facetious but I am curious if anyone has an opinion.

Thanks!!!!

----------------
Update:
After doing some more research I found the below method:
http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/ubu...-ar5007eg.html

Would it be better to use this method:
http://www.ubuntugeek.com/atheros-50...-platform.html
--------------
Final Update:
It seems the build-essential package is not on the mint disk. I have an Ubuntu 8.10 disk however, can I just get it off of that?

My laptop has only this wifi card. I used madwifi and thank god it supported. I had to do some compiling of source and modprobe the new driver etc... I used slackware 12.0


But now i loaded Ubuntu Desktop Version and my wireless card worked in it.
Be careful whether your ubuntu box supports your vga resolution of anything more than the usual 800X600, cos I never got a higher resolution with that.

You can also try Fedora, which is very stable and gets lot of updates. IT supported my wifi card and i was able to access internet using this.

Just download the latest of Fedora or Suse and you can be assured you have the best support.

These are the two distros that i would recommend as of now for a desktop user.

Have Vista as your other OS.. just in case....