I've just installed Suse 10.2 and have been trying to set up my wireless network card,I've tried following instructions from other posts but i can't even get a terminal or yast to recognise ifconfig!!
Am i TOTALLY DUMB or am i just miss typing something?
Please someone explain it to me in Plain English,Cheers.

Were you root when you tried to run ifconfig? If you were not, then you need to switch to root (using "su -") in the terminal before running ifconfig.

I think you need to start by explaining the problem in plain English.

Are you unable to get the terminal working so you can enter the commands, or do the commands themselves now work?

Jonny -
I read your other posts with empathy. My experience mirror yours, but I am now a bit ahead of you on some things like wireless.

As for the wireless, realize that your have both ifconfig and iwconfig. iwconfig is designed for wireless. With network-manager-gnome you can avoid all that command line configuration altogether, which I prefer. I'm lazy and just want to click on the network I want to connect to.

I have tried to install a number of different wireless cards, and nearly abandoned Linux in the process. But there is hope.

First, wireless can be very hard in Linux. Some cards work easily, some with a great deal of knowledge and/or effort, and some won't ever work. It depends mostly on the chip that your wireless card uses. So first, learn that.

Your PCMCIA uses the PCI bus, so go to a console and enter lspci to list the pci devices. You should see info on all your PCI devices, including your wireless card. You may be unable to figure out which entry relates to your wireless card- if so, copy the output from the lspci command and post it here.

Knowing your chip, you can make a good guess at how hard or easy wireless will be, and where to look for help. You can always bail like I did with my laptop and just spend $70 or so to get a card that works easily with Linux. [Money well spent.]

Depending on the chip, there may be a native driver available, or you may find a solution with ndiswrapper - or you may just be out of luck. But first, let's see what we're dealing with.

Maybe bad form, but I recommend that you take a look at Ubuntu. I liked SUSE 10.2 a lot. But I had the same problems finding out how to do simple things. Ubuntu is friendlier to a less experienced user. The official and community supported documentation is really excellent, and as you say, written in plain English.

Bob

Hi Bob, Thanks for the 'Down To Earth,No Nonsense' Reply, The more people explain things to me the more I understand,, And some things actualy stay in my head when I wake up the next morning.
Anyway I am making some progress with the 'Terminal' Window (After noticing that the 'su' command should be in Lower case letters) But I wish that someone would show me a list of all the abbreviated commands and what they do,So that I can learn a bit more.
Right,My wireless card is a Safecom SWLPT-54125 pci card, And in yast it shows, Abocom ACX 111 54mbps Wireless Interface DHCP.
Lspci, 00:0a:0 Network Controller:Texas Instruments ACX 111 54 mbps Wireless Interface
lwconfig, lo-No Wireless Extensions.
Now What Do I Do????

Jonny

I have not tried to set up a Texas Instruments based card. But when I was researching the issue, I recall that TI was one of the most Linux hostile companies of all, and made no info available.

I am almost sure that there is no native driver available for a TI chip. Ndiswrapper is Linux software that "wraps" itself around your Windows drivers and enables them to be used by Linux. I use it on my desktop, but it is not optimal, especially if you are trying new distros - have to set it up every time. It might work with your TI based card, but I doubt it. The ndiswrapper folks maintain a chart where users report if they got ndiswrapper to work with a particular chip.

Personally, I would try to sell that card and get an Atheros based PCMCIA card like this one or at least one http://www.netgate.com/product_info....roducts_id=130 that sets up easily with Linux. Make sure that it supports WEP and WPA2 if you want to be able to link up anywhere.

Knowing the chip, maybe somebody else who has it can help you. I am betting against it, but who knows. You could try posting in the Wireless Networking forum. The problem you may have in buying one is that few companies know much about wireless with Linux, and nobody will guarantee that it will work. But the Atheros chips that work with Madwifi are reliable and set up pretty easy.

Another way to get away from Windows more gradually is to install Linux into a windows virtual machine if your computer has the resources to run 2 os's. You can download the VMWare player virtual machine player (free) and go to easyvmx.com to build a virtual machine. You want to download the Windows version of VMWare Player, and install Linux as the guest OS. You can load Linux into the Widows virtual machine and the wireless will just work with no setup. This will let you use Linux and get on the net without purchasing a new card. It is very easy to do.

For learning the commands, research "LINUX: Rute User’s Tutorial and Exposition" by Paul Sheer. You can download the pdf or html over the web. It is awesome, beautifully written, and assumes very little knowledge on the part of the user.

Bob