its always nice to see a new face, thats what we're here for. I'll try and explain how things work so we can get you on the right track. The likely hood that your wireless card has a linux driver is very slim so i'll guide you throught the ndiswrapper route.
Ndiswrapper is a utility/module that takes drivers that adhere to the Network Device Interface Specifacation (NDIS)[windows drivers] and essentially translates the inputs and outputs so Linux (ODI standard i think) can understand it (wrapper)hence the name.
The first thing you will need to do is get the latest version of ndiswrapper, you can get it
here. I would recommend downloading the source. it should be in tar.gz or bz2 format.
The next step is to copy the file to a place where you can compile the source code (put the program together). When i compile programs i usually do it in /usr/src/ so for me it would be
Code:
cp ndiswrapper-1.32.tar.gz /usr/src
tar -zxvf ndiswrapper-1.32.tar.gz
this will copy the file to /usr/src/ and uncompress it to /usr/src/ndiswrapper.
To compile the code you will need to do
Code:
make && make install
this is actually 2 comands, make builds the program and make install, installs it. I'm assuming that when you installed pc linux you did a full install. If you didn't you will probably get an error having to do with kernel.h
The next thing you will have to do is to install your windows driver, to do it you need 2 files. One will be end in .inf and the other in .sys, (you can also get links and information in that website i sent you under compatibility )after you find and copy them to your linux box navigate to the directory you installed them to and do
Code:
ndiswrapper -i urfilename.inf
then do
Code:
ndiswrapper -l # -l is a lowercase L
you should see something like
Quote:
|
hardware present, installed
|
I would also recommend turning off wireless encryption
until you get everything working
next do
this will make an entry in your /etc/modprobe.conf to automatically load ndiswrapper when you turn on your computer.
Now you will have to verify that everything thus far is working you can do this by running
with any luck you should have an interface named wlan0 with a bunch of stuff.
now you can scan for nearby wireless networks this is done by doing
to connect to a wireless network without encryption just change your ESSID to match the one on the list like this
Code:
iwconfig wlan0 essid URSSID
dhcpcd wlan0
you may or may not have to do the 2nd line. It depends if your distrobution attempts to get an address automatically. When you get done with all of this or have any problems repost and we will go from there.
