Recommend Linux-Freindly Wireless Card?
 

Hi there,

Could anyone recommend to me a wireless network card for a Laptop that will work on both 802.11b and 802.11g networks, and more importantly can easily be used in both Windows XP and Mandrake Linux 9.1?

Thank You,

Daniel Weber

you could try the Linksys cards....they are mostly all well supported under linux.
you can also check out the linux wlan project at:

http://www.linux-wlan.org/

and the pcmcia project:

pcmcia.sourceforge.net

hope this helps

I got an Orinoco Silver. Works fine with 802.11b but I guess it doesn't work wihth 802.11g.

Check this list:

http://www.linux-wlan.org/docs/wlan_adapters.html

And the cards listed as "atheros" driven or "Prism GT"

They're the 802.11g cards with working Linux drivers. They're non-kernel standard drivers, but easily compiled.

Cheers,

Finegan

Knowing what I know now, I'd say stay away from cards with the Realtek rtl8180 chipset. They'll work, but I'd hardly call them friendly. Mine is a Uniden PCW300. Some other comapnies also use this chipset. Do a search for rtl8180 of these forums, youll find them.

Hey guys, thanks for all the replies, definetly helped.

I decided to stay away from LinkSys and go with the NetGear WG511T, with the Atheros Chipset, I do believe it is.

I still use Windows alot, especially for gaming and such so if I can't get it to work in Linux it's not a disaster, but if I do, it will be quite an accomplishment for a :newbie: like me, and would definetly be a convenience, so wish me luck!

If anyone's interested, I'd be happy to post my progress and any resources I find useful.

CHEERS!

-Danzel

HEY GUYS! I'm back! And I think I'm gettin' closer, here's the deal...

Okay, so I got my WG511T, and grabbed Linuxant to help me out. Goin good, installed drivers, detected card, got my license, etc. So the card is installed now, so I figured out the next step is to run that 'iwconfig'. DONE! Once I entered the encryption key, the lights went from alternating (when not connected to a network) to lighting up together (in the same fashion they do under Windows when things are working fine).

So, yeah, I'm thinking I'm all set, I should be able to get on now! Well no... its still not seeing a network or any connection to the internet... any recommendations? Or obvious next steps I don't know about?

BTW, if it helps, here is what my iwconfig says:

eth1 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:"linksys" Nickname:"unknown"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437GHz Access Point: 00:06:25:4A:FA:26
Bit Rate=54Mb/s
Encryption key:5F80-90B6-36
Power Management: off
Link Quality:1/1 Signal level:-91 dBm Noise level:-200 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

As always I appreciate any help, greatly.

-Danzel

Yep, you've got association, now you need to deal with the ethernet layer, because it is after all just another ethernet card. Mandrake should be:

dhcpcd eth1

or...

dhclient eth1

If you're running dhcp off of the Linksys router... which is default. To do it by hand:

ifconfig eth1 192.168.1.101 up
route add default gw 192.168.1.1
echo "nameserver 123.123.123.123" > /etc/resolv.conf

I guessed on the IP range for the router, I think its in the 192.168.1.x series, may be .0.x, and also that's of course a fake nameserver IP address... the router got real ones, you can look at its config page if you want to enter them by hand.

Cheers,

Finegan

driver file??
 

Can you possibly tell me what file you used when installing the Linuxant files?? I have the CD here but no .INF or .NTF files on it. If you can help me out I would appreciate it. I'd like to get this card working.