I'm looking to buy a laptop this summer, and I've decided that motherboard chipsets for wireless have too short a range and are (mostly) not compatible with Linux, so I'm buying a PCMCIA card.

I'd like suggestions for a wireless card that is:

* compatible with Linux
* made by a reputable vendor
* reasonably priced
* currently available
* compatible with 802.11g
* able to do "rfmon" (for Kismet)

Thanks in advance,

Tom

TT; try http://tldp.org/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX,you may find answers there.
has 7 sections with a lot of information and tips,suggestion workarounds.

I had this exact same question. It seems like most resources online are about getting PC cards working with Linux, not which one is most compatible. I'm interested to see what others have to say about this.

I go along with that, I would also be interested to know if there are any manufacturers that are helpful with linux queries or dare I say it, officially support Linux ?

I'm in the market for buying another one once I return my Belkin F5D7010, as it's not really 802.11g, instead it's 54g.....oh, I also read somewhere that Broadcom who make the chipset inside this does not respond to any queries from linux developers

CK

to all above posters; thats why posting so important, the more is wanted the more development is needed by those willing to attempt to make everything work for any linux! so get to work. from newbie`s to designers-
developers all input is vital!

to all above posters; thats why posting so important, the more is wanted the more development is needed by those willing to attempt to make everything work for any linux! so get to work. from newbie`s to designers-
developers all input is vital!

I'd be happy to contribute to open-source projects and get all these things working, but other than some minimal C programming experience and an in-depth knowledge of the 'cd' command, I'm afraid I don't have enough knowledge to even start helping . So it seems like many of us want to know, is there anyone out there with any ideas? There has to be a page on this somewhere, but I googled around for a while and couldn't find anything.

jrdioko; as newbie too i have the mind set to be of help any way possible,
such as this; no matter how inadequate i maybe just with a little bit knowledge that i have that i will depart to others to do same or more if it will help some one else along the way to become better. that will be the learning curve to greater knowledge. is it not how we learn any thing? how did you learn linux or (ms)um? not questioning u r knowledge just nudging
u foward into the unknown , no jumping in not wise but stepping step by step is better way.

I am looking for the same thing as Tom with one additional requirement and one optional thing that would be nice. Any card I get MUST work in x86_64 and it would be nice if it had an external antenna connector.

Currently I have a Netgear a/b/g card that uses an atheros chipset. The madwifi drivers will operate it nicely in 32 bit. That being said...

Would it be so terribly difficult for the distro makers to take those drivers and port them to 64 bit? Actually, let me back up a step, would it be so terribly difficult for distro makers to include these drivers at all? I have been trying different distros to get a system setup the way I want and I am sick of having to compile the stupid drivers every time. I must say thanks to Knoppix for taking the first step by including these drivers in 32 bit.

There is a module for Fedora Core 2 in 64 bit, but I don't like it. First of all, it is not part of their official repository so you have to mess around with signing keys. Second, when I did get the signing key, I started hitting dependency problems. Third, I don't like the general look and feel of Fedora and I don't want to have to be stuck in that distro just to have my wireless work.

Every time I do searches for wireless g cards it seems like at least half of them use atheros. I know there must be at least some other people out there that would like this chipset to work "out of the box" in linux and in more architectures than just i386. It just seems stupid to me that every distro doesn't include it.