I yesterday installed RedHat Linux 9 on my Laptop (it also dual boots into WinXP Professional using GRUB), and I have spent the past day or so browsing over the forums, and so far I have found answers to most of my questions.

One problem though is my wireless card (Intel Wireless LAN 2100 Mini PCI). This card works fine in windows so it is not damaged or anything. The card is to connect to a Linksys Wireless Router Within my home (Model#: BEFW114Sv4). I don't think it even gets that far under Red Hat.

I have tried going through the Network Setup with many configurations but they are all for naught because the wireless card is not listed on the adapter box. I visited the Intel site, which while being nearly impossible to navigate, it also did not contain any drivers for said device for Linux (not surprising).

My question is: Is there any other possible solution to not having support on Linux for my wireless card? Is there any sort of generic driver that can be used for it? Can anyone offer anymore direction or just some assistance? Thank you.


(Here are some of the computer's specifications in case anyone needs to know)

Dell Latitude D600 Notebook
Dual Boot RedHat Linux 9 and Windows XP Professional
Working Ethernet Controller (Broadcom)
Intel Wireless Lan 2100 MiniPCI (not working)
Intel Centrino 1.6GhZ Processor
512mb Ram
Linux Partition is ~8GB
If any other information is needed please ask.

Most likely, eventually, your hardware will be supported, until then (and I know this isn't what you want to hear) why not buy a really cheap pcmcia/cardbus wireless adapter for the notebook? Then, keep your ear to the ground and eventually a project will start up on sourceforge.net for your hardware, or someone will leak a driver on the net somewhere, or someone here at LQ will post a success story, etc.

I went through a similar, sad ritual with my smc 2435w card which has the TI acx100 chipset. At the time, everything I read was discouraging, and yet, about 3 or 4 months later, even without TI's help or consent, I have the card in my Mandrake 9.0 machine and am using the full 22M speed with my SMC router. In the meantime I had ordered 2 more wireless cards from 2 different other manufacturers which now also work with linux. These cards are less than $50 these days. That's not too bad of price to pay for an interim solution, ay?

This is what I suspected, but thank you. I have already been up and down sourceforge (this was already a favorite site of mine before I installed Linux) and there's nothing there yet.

In the meanwhile, could you recommend any of these PCMCIA cards which will install into RedHat easily without too much driver hassle, while still getting decent performance. Thank you for your advice.

You may check http://tuxmobil.org/minipci_linux.html and
http://tuxmobil.org/centrino.html

Werner

Intel are developing a driver aparently. ... but that was commented on articles months ago... we'll c wot happens

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