Ok I am totally new to Linux and I have just set up a dual boot system with xp and Mandrake. This was done on a Dell Inspiron 5100 and I am having a problem getting my wireless Dell True Mobile 1150 card to work. So far i have read a huge amount of material from different websites about installing a pcmcia-cs-2.3.7.tar.gz file from source forge and then installing the card driver (i think its an Orinico card relabled by dell).
So I downloaded the pcmcia file in windows, put it in a fat32(vfat) partition so I could access it from linux. I then unzipped it with gzip and tar'ed it to /usr/src as instructed in the how-to file. Next im supposed to run 'make config' but when I do this it says that the linux kernel is not in usr/src. I cant find the kernel anywhere, even the KDE GUI didnt find it when I found an option to view the source kernel tree.
Anyway with all of that said, I dont have a freekin clue what to do next. I dont know if i need to build a new kernel(whatever that means), or update the kernel(however you do that??) or just find where the kernel tree is located(its got to be there somewhere otherwise linux wouldnt run , right??).
Someone please direct this newbee to linux heaven!!!
thanks

Actually linux runs quite nicely without the kernel source installed. But as you are finding out it IS needed for a few things besides the kernel.

But back to your problem. If you downloaded all of Mandrake (or purchased it) the kernel source code should be on one of the CDs. It isn't installed by default, but there should be a package you can install. If you don't have the CD, I'd check the Mandrake web site. Just be sure to download the package for the same kernel version as you are using now. The command uname -a should tell you what kernel version is running if you don't already know.

Thanks HangDog,

I did the uname command and got this return:
Linux localhost 2.4.21-0.13mdk #1 Fri Mar 14 15:08:06 EST 2003 i686 unknown unknown GNU/Linux

I also took a look on the 3rd cd (I downloaded the cd's and burned them myself) and found what looked like the actuall kernel source but im not really sure. Its basically a thousand different linux files. Im not sure what do do next, how do I install the kernel? Or do I download the newest kernel 2.6? Please someone give me the basic directions to do this, im new to linux command line too.
thanks

Actually, you don't. Or more acurately, you already have. When you did your initial install of Mandrake, you obviously installed a kernel. Your computer wouldn't run without it. What you need to do now it install the kernel source code from your CD (it should be an RPM file, so you can install it the same way you would any other RPM). Once that is installed, go ahead and try to compile ndiswrapper again. You don't need to mess with the kernel source code, it just needs to be present.


You definitely do NOT want to do this unless you are planning on compiling a custom kernel. For ndiswrapper to compile and run correctly it needs the kernel source code for the version of kernel that is actually running. So if you downloaded the 2.6 source code but are running a 2.4 kernel, ndiswrapper isn't going to work. Heck, when I moved to 2.6.4 from 2.6.3 I had to recompile ndiswrapper.