I need some help on choosing a wifi PCI card. I am looking to install Arch onto my Dell Dimension 4700, and it doesn't have a way of wireless internet connection on anything but Windows. I found the ASUS WL-138gV2 card, but then I looked up how to install the b43 drivers without internet connection, and everyone was having problems. I need some suggestions on the card. Should I buy the Asus, or find another? And if you don't suggest the Asus, what should I get? Either 32-bit PCI or PCI Express should do, but I would rather have PCI.

If it connects to wireless on Windows, it must have some kind of wireless connectivity. The ideal solution would be to get that card working under Linux.

Try running the command lspci in a terminal. It will list the pci devices.

Note that the brand on the card doesn't matter; what matters is the wireless chipset in the card. As for a recommendation, Intel chipsets are very well-supported on Linux. Broadcom chipsets and, based on what I see here at LQ, Real-Tek can be tricky to get working. I have three Dells with Broadcom--the older one worked out of the box; the two newer ones needed some tweaking, but work like champs post-tweaking.

The adapter was USB, and I searched endlessly online for a solution other than ndiswrapper. I ended up getting an Intel PCIe wi-fi card, but thanks for the info on the chipsets.

Oh. That casts a different light on things.

I agree that an internal PCI adapter was the best course of action, probably for both Windows and Linux.