Best Linux Distro for Wireless
 

What linux distro is best suited for running wirelessly with a Netgear WAG311. I've tried installing mandrake and it refused to interface at all with the card. It constatnly told me that the card was never plugged in to my laptop, when I could just reach over and feel the card in the slot. What distro makes it fairly plug and play for wireless (even better if it's like that for the same card I have)

Hello there,

There is no "best distro" for wireless, some just have more user-friendly interfaces than others. Wireless networking in Linux is a mess because so few hardware manufacturers release the code for their driver specifications. Therefore Mandrake will detect your card - use the lspci command to confirm this - however becuase it doesnt have a driver for it it cant start it. You will need to check the HCL on this site - see the nav bar at the top of this page for that - and see whether it has an entry for your card and how to get it working.
Regards
Chris

Fedora is user-friendly and it appears that SuSE is good at detecting new hardware.

it has nothing to do with ur distribution.... so much people give so much on the distro, and forget the underlying os is gnu/linux....

Nothing to do with the distro? I see. So Slackware is just as easy to get running for a new linux user with wireless as Mandrake? I'm not sure I agree with you there. There are several contributing factors I agree and the distro is only one of them. Card manufacturer, Card chipset, ndiswrapper/madwifi/etc version, kernel version, wireless tools/extensions version. But the dude asked what was the best distro.

lets say u want to use the built in wireless chip on a centrino notebook, u have to install the stuff from the ipw2200 project; its the same on all distros

lets say u want to use a prism2 wireless chip, u have to have the matching support in ya kernel; its the same on all distros...

these two example match on every other example, the same for configuring the wireless cards: on all distros iwconfig iwlist ndiswrapper... work similar

You do? Oh it must just be me that knows that Suse 9.2 and Mandrake 10.1 come with centrino support out of the box.
As for ndiswrapper working the same on all distros does Fedora really work the same as Suse and Ubuntu. Not really. Fedora needs aliasing so its gui tools recognise a wireless interface whereas Suse works pretty much straight away after installing. Then ubuntu is debian (done right) and so requires separate installation procedures. Come on, all distros are equal but some are more equal than others...

Well, I tried Xandros for a friend and figured that all of the GUI stuff would make wireless a breeze. I was wrong. After a while wasting time I put Slackware on since that's what I'm familiar (and happy) with and had the wireless working in no time.
As for Fedora, I really just can't believe it has a following. I tried it on two different computers just to see what it's all about and I had nothing but annoying problems and it didn't seem to be a very stable OS. I'm back to Slack on those now too and it's rock solid.
I have to say that the learning curve for Slack is well worth it. In the end everything works and you're a lot better off dealing with your system.

Thats what I hear. Basically I ended up with FC3 at the moment becuase I'm doing a research project I cant keep on changing distros. Whatever happens I cant stand kde, gnome is just gorgeous. Things I like about Fedora:
-Update applet telling you when you have updates available
-excellent bugzilla system
-installer is pretty good (not as good as MDK's though)
-nice interface in Gnome
-rapid development cycle

I know this advice probably isn't correct for everybody, but I have tried:
Fedora Core 2, Mandrake, Debian, Gentoo, Slackware, Ubuntu, Mepis, College, and I would have to say that Slackware is by far the easiest and most comfortable to learn. The reason being, once you learn how to approach a linux problem propely, it just becomes a matter of finding the solution and taking care of the problem. Slackware is more simple than other distro's, which means that you get to tell it what to do rather than having a program tell it to do something and you don't learn anything out of it. The Slack install has a much bigger bark than bite. I'm not trying to bash other distro's or anything because I believe they all have their niche and are beneficial for linux in general, like if the user presses a few buttons and hase Mandrake or FC or SuSe installed and they are up and running and happy with it, it's still linux. I just don't understand what is so difficult about Slack, maybe I missed something. I just think it is easier to type some words and demand results rather than push some buttons and hope for them.