anyone get the touted wifi to work in 9.2 live? once again I was disappointed by Suse's hype with my Inspiron 5150's wifi. Which means once again I'd be using DriverLoader which works great but of course has no hotspot locating ability.

It's time these commercial distros lobby hardware vendors for professional drivers once and for all.

I'm disappointed by users who buy Windows specific hardware and try to place the blame on the open source community. It's time that consumers learn how to research their purchases and ONLY purchase hw with Linux support.

Lobbying the vendor will have NO affect. Buying products with Linux support will send a much clearer message. Non-Linux vendors will start supporting Linux if they feel that have to do it to maintain or increase their marketshare.

well newbie did I place the blame on the open source community? no, in fact I've contributed to it like most linux users do. But commercial distros are far from an "open source community" they combine both open and closed (such as the Nvidia driver people like to completely forget about is closed but which absolutely depend on for their computer). For that matter, this distro even touts Centrino support, again far from "open source". So your absolutely wrong about lobbying for commercial support plenty of vendors have done so already, Nvidia, Intel, HP the list could go on and on.

So back to whatever cave you came from flaming troll because this is LinuxQuestions - where people ask questions and get answers and advise, not a place for soapboxing.

Considering Suse's advertising "hot spot" ability and Centrino support I don't think it would have been too much to wonder if the popular Dell chipsets are supported as well. Maybe they are still and I'm doing something wrong.

So again, anyone have any luck?

RRepster,

Let me try to give you a hand here. I also use DriverLoader from Linuxant and before I even began to post I realized that this Community can be tough on Newbies. I've been flamed a time or two.

Back to the point.

There's 2 tools that you need to find hotspots and connect to them. KNemo and KWifimanager. Find the .rpms and do the install.

If you want to find the wireless networks in your area -- from Root -- try "iwlist scanning". This will return the wireless systems in your area. You'll find those that are WEP enabled, those that aren't and those that you may not want to try connecting to.

Good luck.

RRepster and cjcox -- Per the LQ Rules, let's avoid name-calling and flames. That is *not* what LQ is about, and if this thread can't stay on topic, it will be closed. If you want to debate the state of open source computing, vendor support for Linux, etc, etc, please take it to the General forum, otherwise, please stay on topic, and please keep the discussion civil and polite. Thanks -- J.W.

Thanks Adler, printed it out to work on. Still disappointing that so far 9.2 hasn't lived up to its advertising though.

JW, no problem but I really get the feeling you'd have done nothing had I not defended my points and I'm the one that put it back on topic. Never have I run into such flack for asking questions in the Slackware forum I was appalled at cj's response - period.

RRepster,

As you mentioned you use DriverLoader. Or, is it simply that you are running this on the 30 day trial period.? Whatever the case, I found for the US$80.00 bucks that I spent on SuSE 9.1 Pro that this was the cheapest thing that I'd ever done pc-wise.

BTW, I never had great hope for getting wireless going w/ 9.1 or possibly 9.2. There's too many configurations out there, plus the Intellectual Property issues. Media is also, more or less the same thing. A lot of patents out there.

I found an alternative and my Wireless system rocks, plus the Community support isn't usually as bad as it might now seem.

Please do check out the apps that I mentioned, plus the RUN command.

RRepster -- LQ is not like other boards, and name-calling is out of bounds here at LQ. The LQ forums are very actively monitored, and if a discussion has all the earmarks of getting out of hand, a mod will step in. -- J.W.

J.W.,

Along the way here, I hope that I'd added some support to the question.

>>I hope that I'd added some support to the question.

You did to me anyways.

>>BTW, I never had great hope for getting wireless going w/ 9.1 or possibly 9.2

Yea with 9.1 I didn't expect it to as they weren't advertising it. 9.2 is an entirely different story and in fact they may be dangerously close to false advertising. But that's an opinion from a consumer perspective is all.

At any rate the cool thing about their "live" is it seems to be a way of testing ones system to see if it will work as they claim. In my case it failed. They advertise Centrino support and hotspot ability, now why they'd leave out Dell support is a mystery considering its one of the larger notebook wifi solutions out there if not even bigger than Centrino. Just a disappointment really but my purpose of my original question was as I said to see if I was doing something wrong. Apparently I'm not, and DriverLoader or ndis remains to the only solution. No biggie, disappointing because they led us on for some time that 9.2 would be exciting and gave us some hope by their touting wifi on their website now that it's unvieled. But still no biggie. Updating their h/ware database especially exactly what wifi solutions are solved in 9.2 when they unvieled it the other day would have been a huge help and then we actually could *gasp* know what linux ready h/ware to get like someone *suggested* (which it wasn't I still say it was a flame, but I digress).

For business advertising purposes I do hope Suse makes it much more clear what 9.2 can and can't do before people are out money.

>> There's 2 tools that you need to find hotspots and connect to them. KNemo and KWifimanager. Find the .rpms and do the install.

So are you saying that KNemo and KWifimanager will work with DriverLoader?

Sigh. Lighten up folks (moderator included). Rrepster, the comment was not aimed at you, but trying to redirect us ALL to the best way to encourage vendor support. The distributions cannot "lobby" the vendors into writing drivers. What we need is educate people to CHOOSE vendors that are supporting GNU/Linux. This sends a real message. If you must go the "lobby" route, vendors will be more moved by an actual buyer's comments.

A message like, "Hey, if you think you might try Linux, buy this hardware instead of that hardware", etc. In your case, "if you get a Dell 5150, don't get the Wifi option, buy it separately" (see below).

Rrepster... I sincerely hope you understand my comment. I have nothing against you.

Prism (http://www.prism54.org/supported_cards.php, e.g. PrismGT powered Xterasys XG600 MiniPCI card to replace your Broadcom Truemobile) might your best bet, but not if you require WPA support (though I think it's being worked on)... but should be able to work with your laptop (I'm pretty sure). If you need WPA support and g, Altheros (http://sourceforge.net/projects/madwifi/) might be a good bet (though it's not totally free... has a proprietary HAL).

So... for example, buying Altheros/PrismGT based cards/laptops might be a good thing. Laptops, btw, especially with built-in wireless is a real pain (buyer beware... btw... it's a pain for Windows users as well). Word to the wise, choose a laptop with a minipci slot and add your own wifi. If you find laptop vendors that offer good Linux choices (like the ones I mentioned.. or any other) for wifi... send them an encouraging note/email.

Sorry for offending anyone and hope this helps,
Chris

It's not a matter of Suse 'leaving out' support for your particular chipset. Linux drivers for Broadcom wireless chipsets doesn't exist, and there's not much that can be done about it.

Support for the Intel 2100 card (common on Centrino-laptops) was included in 9.1 and it works great. Hopefully 9.2 adds support for the Intel 2200 card.

I also use the 3com OfficeConnect 11g pcmcia-card. It's based on the Prism54 chip and is plug-and-play on Suse 9.1.

Yes, you did, absolutely. Thanks, this is what LQ is all about -- J.W.

El Basto,

"So are you saying that KNemo and KWifimanager will work with DriverLoader?"

Yes - they both work and KNemo puts three little icons in the taskber that show Ethernet, Wireless and SIT sevices. So when you connect you can see the icons lightup.

KWifimanager is useful to configure the WLAN connections that are out there. In other words, if you are in an area, with more than one wireless system available, you need to enter the SSID name for the connection you want to make.