I thought I'd try slackware... install went ok, etc. however my undetected wireless card (a linksys card with the broadcom chipset) leaves me with no network access. I'm used to using ndiswrapper in other distros and was surprised it wasn't included in the install package.
So... my hard drive is too small (3 gb with 500 mb of that going to swap)to load the source and compiler so I think that eliminates downloading the ndiswrapper source and installing it. I'm not aware of any linux drivers for the wireless card. Am I totally out of luck here? a search of this and the slackware forums had virtually no references to ndiswrapper other than from folks who were apparently compiling it into their systems. I had hoped to find a slackware package but no such luck.
btw, the wireless card is the linksys wmp54g version 2. not the verison 4 that has the ralink chipset.

Slack has never, IIRC, included ndiswrapper. Ndiswrapper is very straightforward to install and so there has never been a need to package it. The package size is very small, so there shouldn't really be an issue of size - unless you have filled your 3gb, of course.

Welcome to LQ btw.

I'm obviously missing the obvious - which is installing it. All I find on sites like sourceforge is reference to compiling the source code after downloading it. since 'make' isn't an option on my install, then I need to do what? And thanks for the quick reply!

I don't understand what the problem is, why can't you compile it?

3 GB is more than large enough to hold GCC and the kernel source.

how come? you got to install a lot of software from source on Slackware, it's easy as it can be.

check this guide for ndiswrapper

ok - I loaded the source package, headers package, the gcc packages, and the make utility package.

I downloaded the 1.7 ver of ndiswrapper from sourceforge and followed the instructions found there for installing it.
When the instructions say to "go to source directory and do" I assume they mean the ndiswrapper source directory? I do that and do the "make distclean" and it seems to work - lots of output that means nothing to me...
then I do the "make" and get the following error message:

~/ndiswrapper-1.7# make
make -C driver
make[1]: Entering directory `/root/ndiswrapper-1.7/driver'
cc -DEXPORT_SYMTAB -DMODVERSIONS -include /lib/modules/2.4.31/build/include/linux/modversions.h -DDRIV
ER_VERSION=\"1.7\" -DLINUX -D__KERNEL__ -DMODULE -I/lib/modules/2.4.31/build/include -Wall -Wstrict-pr
ototypes -fomit-frame-pointer -fno-strict-aliasing -pipe -O2 -mpreferred-stack-boundary=2 -c -o hal
.o hal.c
cc: installation problem, cannot exec `as': No such file or directory
make[1]: *** [hal.o] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/root/ndiswrapper-1.7/driver'
make: *** [all] Error 2

What would be my next step?

The "as" program is part of the binutils package, which you don't seem to have installed either.
At installation time, how did you make your decisions on what to install and what not?

You should realize that Slackware is not a hand-holding distribution, with tools like yum, apt-get or up2date. Compiling software from source is an essential part of working with Slackware. You might not feel comfortable with this at first, but it will be a heck of a learning experience once you get familiar with the "./configure && make && make install" mantra.
On the other hand, if you came to Slackware expecting a morph of Fedora Core or SuSE Linux, then you might be somewhat disappointed.
I'd say, give Slackware a chance on your computer, play with it, and decide after sometime if it fits with your computer needs.

Good luck, and remember, there's lots of people on LQ that are willing to help you discovering your new Slackware.

Eric

maybe trying an older version or a newer kernel?

Well, the package manager assured me that the binutils pkg was indeed installed. at that point, I just said enough already and started over with a fresh install, assuming that I had undoubtly botched the original job...

After the re-install, I downloaded the new ndiswrapper (v1.8) package, followed the install instructions from sourceforge, and it worked just fine this time around. I ran firefox for a little bit and it didn't crash or anything drastic like that so I think I'm good to go!

Thanks for the help with this one - as normal, in the end it usually comes back to operator error!