My slackware install is pretty much default, expect I haven't installed KDE and other window managers and I have a custom kernel.

I can connect when I boot knoppix but not with my installation of Slackware. I connect to a public access wifi via a wireless bridge. A Belkin f5d7330 802.11g. It sometimes connects, but sometimes doesn't. Today, I couldn't even ping the bridge? My only theory is that everytime the DHCP server/bridge renews the addresses my computer cannot reconnect for some reason or that there is some cache file that I don't know about that is causing the trouble. I'm not really sure what else I can say. I've given a look through some internet connectivity articles, like linuxhomenetworking.com, but they didn't fix the problem.

This is really pissing me off because I have far more important things to do with my time than to worry about whether or not I'm connected to the internet and using knoppix is not a solution. I would buy my own connection, but there are no reasonable service providers in my area.

Custom kernel? That probably is your problem ... try booting into knoppix, find out what are the drivers etc. that the wifi needs and make sure you have them in your custom kernel.

I have two identical ethernet cards and samba run perfectly, except I can't print, but that's another problem... Also, I can SSH into my system from my other computer(and vice versa), but ONLY using the IP address, if I use its hostname it stalls. At any rate, if the problem was drivers, wouldn't samba not work? Or do I need a driver for my bridge? The instructions never mentioned anything about a driver for either Mac, Windows or Linux, just said to configure it via your web browser and normally it would work right out of the box.

OH, I just remembered, don't know why I didn't post this originally. Every now and again, I get this weird message spit into stdout, it says something about problems with IRQ 11 and 17. IRQ 17 is the ethernet card that is "connected" to the internet. IRQ 11 is my keyboard, and after it says that if I type a letter it outputs two of the same at the same time, for instance if I type "A" it will output "AA" and so on. This very well could be a problem with my kernel. The only consistency to this is that it seems to only appear when I try and access my printer, but I cannot say for certain that that(consistency) is the case, it seems completely random to me and happens very infrequently. Of course, this may not have anything to do with the problem.

Hmm , IRQs genrally mean something is wrong with the H/W or something.

I am sorry I don't have much experience with wifi... maybe someone else can help you.

If your samba etc. is working means that the interface is correctly up. I guess there is a problem with wifi setup, but that is all greek to me.