Want A Well Supported Linux Wifi Card

[Pear]

I had some success yesterday with PE finally taking up linux (ubuntu) on an old machine they aquired, that is the first machine in the schol I don't own that has gone that way . I told them to get a wireless pci card for it, but am unsure of what would brands are supported well enough, without me having to search around the internet all weekend. I installed ubuntu at home and the only thing it didn't pick up was my Belkin wireless card so I assume I should stay away from them ? I also want it to be a *good* pci card as the wifi signal is quite low in PE and they don't mind spending money.

 

I see belkin, netgear and d-link in the CPC catalogue infront of me.

[Geoff]

What Belkin card? Model number preferably please?

 

For general Linux WiFi advice, consult the HOWTO documents.

 

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Wireless-HOWTO.html

http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/

 

Your Distro will usually have a Hardware Compatability List on their website.

 

http://www.ubuntux.org/node/40

[Pear]

I think the belkin is model fsd7001uk

[Geoff]

Looks like you have to use ndiswrapper for that (bleah).

 

http://www.linuxcompatible.org/Belkin_F5D7000_uk_c12158.html

 

ndiswrapper is here

 

http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/

 

Installation info is in the Wiki

 

http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/mediawiki/index.php/Installation

[penguinpowered]

I have had nothing but trouble with all 3 of those brands in Linux. Ndiswrapper has give me nothing but headaches in the past. When you finally get it working correctly it is quite flaky and very unreliable and the speeds you get are quite poor.

 

Try getting one based on either the orinoco/hermes chipset or a prism 2 chipset.

I use an enterasys 801.11b pcmcia (orinoco gold) card and that works great in my laptop. I also used to use a 11mbps prism2 based card in my pc.

 

The only cards (that I know of) that work relliably (or at all) on linux boxes are orinoco/hermes and prism/prism2 based cards. I think that the 11mbps cisco ones work too. But don't use any prismgt based cards (all the ones you named above) as they are flaky at best and most of the time don't work.

 

Incidentally, I haven't got a card that is faster than 11mbps to work with linux yet (I stopped trying about 8 months ago). Presumably it is because the vast majority of 54mbps cards use the prismgt chipset.

[Geoff]

Didn't try the Prism54 driver then?

 

http://prism54.org/

[penguinpowered]

Yeah, but got nowhere with it. Tried using the pre-packaged version, re-compiling from source and every other trick I could scoure from the internet.

The best I could do was a netgear card that worked 50% of the time with a speed of about 2mbps average. It occasionally hit around the 50mbps mark but would then segfault and I'd be back at square one with having to go through the whole installation and configuration process again (the card and it's drivers would NEVER recover from a crash without me cleaning out all the files and starting again).

Eventually I gave up and got a nice 11mbps re-branded orinoco and I've been happy ever since.

 

Maybe it's time I should revisit this little nightmare of mine and see if the drivers (and my C++ knowledge) are any better nowadays.

[Geoff]

Well ndiswrapper is probably the best place to start at the moment. Which is why I suggested it first

[Pear]

Not an external card, but the centrino technology inside my laptop works fine for ubuntu and runs at 54mps all the time. also it doesn't crash the wireless point after 5 minutes like if I run it in windows

 

However if what your saying is true then my plan to add wireless cards to new linux boxes being transformed from the old windows cast offs will not work as the speed will be too slow.

[Geoff]

Try it an see.

[penguinpowered]

You may as well try it Pear. What I wrote above was my experience of 'fast' wireless from a few months ago. The drivers will probably have been updated, chip firwares upgraded, etc. so your mileage may vary.

It's worth giving it a go and if it doesn't work, try ndiswrappers like geoff suggests. If you aren't to comfortable with all the conf files and the command line, I think you can get a gui front end to ndiswrapper (I've seen one on DSL Linux and some flavour of knoppix) however I can't remeber what it is called so you're best googling it.

 

Good luck.

[SmartArt]

I have had nothing but trouble with all 3 of those brands in Linux. Ndiswrapper has give me nothing but headaches in the past. When you finally get it working correctly it is quite flaky and very unreliable and the speeds you get are quite poor.

 

Try getting one based on either the orinoco/hermes chipset or a prism 2 chipset.

I use an enterasys 801.11b pcmcia (orinoco gold) card and that works great in my laptop. I also used to use a 11mbps prism2 based card in my pc.

 

The only cards (that I know of) that work relliably (or at all) on linux boxes are orinoco/hermes and prism/prism2 based cards. I think that the 11mbps cisco ones work too. But don't use any prismgt based cards (all the ones you named above) as they are flaky at best and most of the time don't work.

 

Incidentally, I haven't got a card that is faster than 11mbps to work with linux yet (I stopped trying about 8 months ago). Presumably it is because the vast majority of 54mbps cards use the prismgt chipset.

 

 

The Cisco Aironet cards work fine. I've had sterling service from both the 340 and 350 cards. My Linksys card is recognised but doen't work correctly, I've had problesm trying to get it working using ndiswrapper as well. The 350 runs at g speeds, 54kbps.

 

AFAIK different distros have different success rates with different cards. But I've never had any problems with 340 or 350 cards in any distro.