Hello
I have a Dell Inspiron E1505 laptop. Dell doesn't make hardware for Linux to access the internet wirelessly which includes the hardware that comes inside the laptop.


1)Where can I get an external wireless USB adapter with drivers that will allow Linux to access the internet?

2)What are the commands to install the driver information from the CDROM discussed above?

1. Look in the HCL section here at the top and to the right and see what you can buy and look them up in the HCL to see what it takes. I know of not many wireless devices mostly from long ago with any linux support directly. You need to know the chipset of the nic and then get the approiate modules and compile them to the kernel.

2. Now many are not supported but wil work with a package called ndiswrapper. You install that and load the windows inf driver that came with the nic and it interfaces that with ndiswrapper to work. Most all USB ones I know of will only work with ndiswrapper. A better choice is Atheros based chipset nics but not sure if there are and USB ones around. With Atheros based ones they use madwifi package. So from here search here and google on the terms mentioned in this to learn more about them before proceeding.

Brian

Edit: if my post is going to be ignored, there's no reason for it to stick around.

********************** BELOW IS MY REPLY **************************
Hello

I understand however that will mean that I have the internal wireless card that doesn't work with Linux installed and the USB wireless adapter/device installed that will work with Linux at the same time. I need both of them because my laptop dual boots therefore when I am using XP my laptop will use the internal wireless driver that came with the laptop. But when I am using Linux my laptop will use the external USB adapter/device.

I am wondering since Linux see both the internal wireless card and the external USB adapter/device will it get confused as which to use to access the internet as in the way computers have IRQ conflicts?

If only one is configured then that is the one that is used.

Brian

Hello reverse

I did not imagine I was ignore your post. I didn't reply because I would have to send by Fedex my laptop to Dell for them to convert it into the same configuration as your laptop (if that is possible) and then I would have to purchase the hardware that they would use to reconfigure it to match your laptop's configuration because I don't have A+ experience. Then I would have to wait for them to send it back to me. Equally as important I would have incurred the entire expense of sending my laptop back to them, the parts and labor and them sending it back to me. Whereas the solution to get the external USB adapter/device from a wholesale outlet was more time and cost efficient for me. However, I did appreciate your post and maybe ultimately I may have to try your suggestion. I appreciate when anyone replies to my posts. In case I didn't say so, I thank you very much for your post. In the past I only replied to posts that I actually am able to implement.