Hi everyone - complete newbie here. I'm trying to learn about Linux and have installed Linux Mint and Open Suse on my old PC. I need to connect to the web via wireless and have tried a Netgear MA111 USB network gadget adapter which doesn't seem to be recognised by either distro. Anyone got any suggestions on a distro that will work with the MA111. Thanks in advance for any advice

Checkout the last post in this thread

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ora-11-727144/

It appears ndiswrapper is the easiest way.

ndiswrapper is a program that you will find in your Suse repository
I can not vouch for Mint.

Larry

Ubuntu and Mandriva have really good hardware support in my experience, however avoid Ubuntu 9.10, go for 9.04 or older. Something with the new version of Gnome in newer distro releases such as Ubuntu 9.10 and Fedora 12 has broken wireless for a lot of people.

bugster, I cannot reccomend Ubuntu (9.xx distros); I never got wireless to work, even using ndiswrapper. The one that worked right away without a lot of messing around was SimplyMepis 7...they are up to 8 now and wireless is still super easy to set up, but I am having problems with the sound for some reason, but it seems to be just bad luck.

I suggest getting(downloadable) the LiveCD mepis 8 and see how that works for you. They also have an excellent community forum which is very helpful and supportive. IHTH

Thanks everyone for your advice. I had no joy with OpenSuse or LinuxMint so installed MepisLimux as suggested by Joseph. Can't seem to find a way though to get it to recognise the wireless Netgear MA111. So any further suggestions really appreciated thanks.

I could not find any linux drivers for netgear wireless cards. Your best solution is to try and use ndiswrapper with windows drivers or buy a wireless card with a ralink, atheros or broadcom chip.

The type of distro will not help. Some distros are easier to setup some of the wireless cards but you need a card that will work with a propritary linux driver.


Larry

Thanks Larry. I've done a "ndiswrapper" search and found about 8 folders in mepis. I have also found the terminal - well a dos like blank screen awaiting input - which I reckon is the terminal, question do I need to transfer ndiswrapper into this terminal? Sorry for being naive!!

Yes if you use ndiswrapper you will need terminal but first you should be able to install ndiswrapper with your package manager which in Suse is YaST but I am not sure which distro you are using. These package managers will install programs with the dependences needed for that distro. Another thing is this will be similar with any linux distro you pick. First pick the distro that you want to stick with then let us know. Find the package manager and try and install ndiswrapper and if you have any problems try and be as accurate as possible if there are any errors. If you pick a distro on cd you may not find ndiswrapper on the cd but most distros on dvd have the ndiswrapper.

bugster, I have a difficult wireless card also, mine is blacklisted almost everywhere. But, I got it to work with Mepis pretty easily. There's a web forum specifiaclly for mepis folks, I am not sure I can mention that here, but, that's where I got help with this.

First thing, in a mepis Konsole do this:
that will tell you about devices attached to the bus, wireless card shows at the bottom of the file...if the system sees it, then it will be on that list, else not.

please post the output of lspci here (just cut and paste from console).

next start>internet>network connections>mepis network assistant

at that window you have some things to set up. it's really important to use the right setup here, or it won't work. For me it was "enable broadcom", might be different for you. I used "use dhcp for dns"...then I goto troubleshooting tab. Click on the "scan hardware" button, is your card there? next click on "list linux drivers". this has to match the former driver response...ndiswrapper vs broadcom someother (me).
exit and reboot mepis. lspci should now show your wireless card on your system

that should be it, afterward when I went to knetwork manager, the network would show up under wireless and lspci showed the card installed. done.

try that and see if it helps.

Thanks Larry. Good news in Simply Mepis I found synaptic package manager and there are 3 files referring to ndiswrapper already installed apparently. I also found the original CD with Windows drivers for my Netgear MA111 USB wireless card. There is a file on it named NETMA111.inf. I opened this and found there are about 300 lines of text. This is my best progress so far - am I right to feel a bit excited that the end may be in sight ?

Edit Thanks Joseph, our posts must have crossed. I'll have a go but unfortunately cannot cut and paste as my linux computer is not connected to this windows one and is about 40 feet away in another building.

I just tried typing

su
lspci

and it asked my password then said unknown id ?

Thanks everyone for your help.

I solved the problem in Linux Mint. I inserted the Netgear CD which then displayed the Windows driver files then clicked on the NETMA111.inf file. I was asked if I wanted to run this file in Terminal and I clicked Yes. After a few seconds an icon appeared on screen saying Wireless Network Available. So I opened Firefox and it took me straight to the Linux Mint homepage. Result !!

Thanks again to everyone.