So is there anyone out there who has had experience with Debian (stable or un) and the NDISwrapper? What encouraged me to start posting about this is what happened on RedHat when I tried to make ndiswrapper.... got some errors looked them up and found out I would need to do a kernel upgrade as well as some other obnoxious stuff just so I could make the darn thing, let alone actually get the WUSB54G working.

I run mepis 3.3, which is based on debian unstable. From the debian repositories I have access to binary packages for ndiswrapper v1.1 (the latest). But according to the page I posted, you need v0.10rc1, the later versions of ndiswrapper don't seem to work with that adapter.

Debian stable won't be able to use ndiswrapper with the standard kernel. Ndiswrapper requires a 2.4.x kernel at least. Ndiswrapper isn't installed and configured automatically cause it uses windows drivers. Some distros include linux drivers but only a select range will work with it so if you have to use ndiswrapper you have ton install it yourself.

I use debian sid (unstable) and slackware current with ndiswrapper and it works good.

But seriously, no distro is better or worse with wireless. Any distro with a recent enough kernel (if you don't want to recompile) can do it. Do you have to set a lot? I don't think so, you just need to know what. Then there's the ndiswrapper wiki which has a lot of info. So check if your card is supported and which version of the driver you want (for example when there are problems with a certain card) Install it. Then there are only a few steps you have to do before it'll run automatically. You can also ask if you can't figure it out and mostly you'll get answers really fast.

you should look at this linux I saw at http://microsoft.com/windows its realeased and has support for roaming wireless including netstumbler, may you should totally download the binaries. It's the best 'released' distro available at the moment. However there are a number of periodically updated linux's that are significantly better becuase the work with new software like ndiswrapper, which is still a cludge. LInux Wireless still lacks a lot of maturity and driver support. Be prepared to pay for top of the line, you're not going to get what YOU want for free.

NO offense to linux devs, it's pretty much the industry's fault, and the fact that wireless netwroking isn't simple, it just looks simple in windows.

Wow, that took balls in a linux forum!

Seriously though, Windows isn't that great with wireless, I have had more headaches with it than Fedora to be honest. Oh want a headache try to get Wireless on Red Hat, that's a pain...then install FC3 and recapture your sanity.

10 problems

1. DHCP would refuse to assign me a new address, and no this isn't the router
2. Bad link quality representation (aka in the native Windows status it shows like dead quality and in the utility that came with the card shows almost perfect quality)
3. Link apears disconnected when really connected, aka red X over computers though can still browse internet
4. Repair hangs indefinetly with Zone Alarm and sometimes without
5. Complete random reboots solely because of the Wireless driver. Fedora has 0 reboots with the same driver in ndiswrapper,
6. Wireless would change over to the crappy one next door even after explicitly turning all auto switching features off (like prefered networks and advanced access point settings)
7. Windows Firewall would randomly turn on completly blocking file and printer sharing (this is true, M sucks for this alone)
8. I have to put my wep key in twice, this just pisses me off.
9. General lag, just because of Windows (really Windows is generally 1 or more step(s) behind Linux when it comes to responsiveness)
10. This one pisses me off the absolute utter most, so I saved it for last. I had a PnP usb wireless B device, and a static ip address. Sometimes Windows would randomly hide this and reinstall it, with a dynamic ip. When told to change to static a long ass message would come up saying another device with the same ip was hidden because it wasn't connected and I couldn't. To resolve this you have to literally hack the registry and delete those extra hidden connections in Device Manager. Cartman would have set fire to his computer before he figured this out hehe.

4 solutions

Linux (FC3)
ndiswrapper (1.1)
net5211.inf
dhcpcd

If anyone wants to assume that it was my crappy router or dodgy off brand pci card that I bought for $1 from some flee market, let me just specify my hardware:

Gigabyte GN-B49G router
GIgabyte GN-WPEAG pci card

Yes, I installed Sarge, upgraded the kernel to 2.6, removed the 2.4 kernel, installed NDISWRAPPER and used it to setup a NetGear WG311v2 with the notorious Texas Instrument's ACX-111 chipset.

So far the Rf link has only broken once and all the PC's lost their connection. The router crashed and had to be reset. My wife's PC had to have the wireless software restarted as well to for her to reconnect.

NDISWRAPPER won't work with woody and IMHO is shakey at best with v2.4 kernel.

How easy was it to set up? I am a TOTAL Linux noob and it took me two days to get it going. That included installing over the net and upgrading the kernel. How stable is the connection? More stable than WinXP. My wife's (WinXP) PC is 6 feet from the router and she loses link more often than I do (at 30 feet with two walls and a metal desk in between) and she sometimes has to reboot to get it back.

I am now doing a "burn-in" to see how long this will go without rebooting. It started this AM.

RK

About your good card and router, just about every wireless G card is a broadcom and doesn't have native linux drivers, but as long as you have the correct driver version for your card (very important, and picky) ndiswrapper is pretty easy to setup. I'd also like to add that I don't think very highly of the boradcom card, it seems to work using software to do hardware's job, kindof like playing UT2004 with i810 graphics, sometimes it's just not pretty.

Sorry about the windows comment, I simply don't want to give anybody the idea that there is any distro that is foolproof in terms of networking. The networking for linux is, in many ways, designed for networkers and industry pros, and some of the more advanced things do not have built in support for less-knowledgeable people. Linux wireless work great when it works, when vendors supply driver or when driver are open, YourResultsMayVary. Windows pretty consitently works, but badly; again: YRMV.

Sorry for my jackass comment, I guess I was in a mood or something. and Windows for the most part is great with networking, I just don't want anyone to think with Windows there comes no problems because there certainly are plenty of problems.

apparently there is a sourceforge project 'waproamd' that may allow roaming wireless connectivity like in windows.

http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/waproamd/

Gotta love open source, the best there is.

I've had tremendous success with SuSE 9.2--even with WEP--with my Netgear WG511 card. I spent a lot of time researching this as well and, from what I've found + my opinion, it matters more which card you're using than which distro you're using.

If wireless is important to you, then buy a card with a chipset that's proven to work.

Different distros come with different drivers built in, so on Fedora your Netgear wireless card may get picked up very easily, but on Red Hat you may need to jump though serious hoops for it to even half work. These are just two examples, not trying to dis the distros or anything like that.

I'm currently using SUSE 9.2 Pro, and this is the only distro that was a breeze to set up my wireless with. I have a Dell Inspiron 8200 with a Linksys WPC11 Wireless B card. It's not specifically what this forum is initially asking for, but getting this card up and running with this distro was absolutely without pain. I was totally shocked, because to this point, I had never been able to get my Linksys card to work. I am very pleased.

I also agree with the statement made above. My experience is that some cards are just plain not supported well with Linux. Despite the fact that most of their consumer-level products are based on Linux, Linksys doesn't seem to have much solid Linux support for their wireless products. I understand that any card based on the Orinoco chipset has excellent support.

Hope this helps.

as for good distros, I'd definately have to say Ubuntu. It's debian-based, extremely stable, and both my cisco aironet 340 and buddy's xircom cards were supported by default. Also, ndiswrapper and tons of wireless tools are available in the universe/multiverse repositories.