where can I find Linux compatible wireless dell driverss
 

I am starting a class soon (intro to unix/linux) so if no one is able to help me then I can get help from mu professer. Anyway, I installed red hat fedora core 9 o n my dell laptop as it is a book for my class. I was impatient and didn't want to figure out how to partition my drive to run dual OS' and it wiped out XP. That's fine, I can live w/o it but one thing I can't live w/o is internet access. So my question is where can I find Linux compatible dell drivers available for download? I looked on the Dell site and searched for keywords like linux wireless drivers... etc. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated and paid forward.

we need to know which wifi card you use.
Usually, the first step here would be to give us the output of lspci or /sbin/lspci

You are not going to find linux wireless drivers on a Dell site, unless it was a Ubuntu pre-load. Since this is Fedora, you will get them form Fedora.

First thing to determine is what wireless chip set you have.

To do that, open a konsole and run the command '/sbin/lspci'. Run the command without quotes. Post the results. If you cut and paste the line for the wireless card, that is enough. You will have a line for each device on the PCI bus.

Second, see if there are modules already loaded. They may be there if Fedora has the support for your chip set, and was able to detect your hardware.

To do that, run the command '/sbin/lsmod'. ( no quotes ). This will generate a long list of modules loaded.

Cut and paste the results.

If the modules are loaded, you need to configure the card with correct parameters for the network you want to connect to. Then you configure the radio part. You won't be able to do that until we know the correct modules are loaded for your card. Wireless is a challenge at the best of times, so patience helps.

It would also help if you run two other commands. Run 'ifconfig -a' that will show all your interfaces that are known now. Also run 'iwconfig'. This will list your wireless interfaces, of course it is not configured yet, so it won't show too much. Hope this gets you started...

What exactly did you mean by cut and paste? Did you mean paste into a reply? Your information has helped me so far, I hope that you will continue to respond to me! Thanks Cliff!

Cut and paste - When you run a command in a konsole, linux outputs data to the console.

Cutting is marking the data with the mouse pointer, usually left mouse button down, drag it across the
data, the data will be marked with a reverse highlight. Then you copy it to the clipboard. Ctrl + c keys together. The clipboard is a part of memory the data gets copied to. Pasting into the note you post is done by editing the note ( quick reply on this board ). To paste, place the cursor where you want the data to appear. Press the ctrl + v keys together. This will paste the data in the clipboard to the note.

If you look at the top of the Quick Reply edit box you will see some symbols. There is one that looks like a balloon with a pointer. If you click it, it will enter Quote and Equote. Paste the data between these formatting marks. It will separate your data from typed text, and make your reply much more readable.

LOL I know how to cut and paste... I was afraid that you might say paste into a reply. I have no internet access on that PC. I will just go ahead and put down what I can find and later, if I find out how to transfer it from one PC to another, I will post the complete results.
under lspci I have found that I use under lsmod I have determined that my wireless chip set is not installed.
Does this help? Thanks Camorri

http://ipw2100.sourceforge.net/ is a project to supply drivers for that card.

Thanks Xavi, I will give it a try!

Make sure you read it thoroughly first and get all the files it needs. You may be able to download them via Yum.

Nah, I have to DL from my other PC which runs windows. I just burnt it onto a blank cd. I think I may have to wait a couple more days until school starts so my instructor can help. I am very new to Linux as an OS and can't very well understand what it all means. I am just so excited to be getting in to it and I probably jumped the gun a little bit. Hopefully I won't be the only one in my class to be totally lost...

Not unless every one else is sandbagging! It is an Into to Linux course after all. It may be a prerequisite and some of the students may already be very familiar with Linux. If that is the case, you may be able to get help from other students and not need to bother your professor at all!

I was talking with a head end tech for a small cable television company, in a small western Minnesota town. He told me that all of the techs took a computer course and it mostly covered Linux. The devices will have Linux inside and their Servers run on Linux, so they need to be familiar with it, including using the bash shell.

That is a great idea! Thanks for the encouragement!

If fedora is not a requirement I can tell you that Ubuntu 8.04 supports the Intel 2100 that you have. I have the same device in my Dell Inspiron 600m and it works fine with Ubuntu.

Norm