On 24/07/05 18:06:51, Stroller wrote:
On Jul 24, 2005, at 1:49 am, Ian K wrote:
I have an older laptop that I want to add to my network,
(its a 802.11B one) and I was wondering what brands/models
would work the best under Linux. Im fairly flexible, and would
really not like to tinker with too many drivers. Any good ideas?
Currently available are cards using the Ralink chipset, as this
manufacturer has open-sourced their own drivers and there is a strong
GPL project that will (I believe) eventually join the main kernel
tree.
I bought one of these by accident - I bought a PC with an Asus A8V
motherboard without realising that it included on-board wireless with
the RT2500 chipset.* The main thing to beware of is that the RT2500
driver doesn't work with SMP kernels; at first, before I realised this,
I was using an SMP kernel even though I have a single-processor system,
and found that the system would lock up within seconds of loading the
RT2500 module.
* Asus made (make?) two motherboards with almost-identical part
numbers, and almost identical specs, the main difference being the
wireless chipset. When I bought my PC, the spec didn't mention enough
of the mb part number to tell which it was; but as wireless wasn't
mentioned in the PC spec, and I was offered (and turned down) a
wireless card as an optional extra, I assumed I'd be getting the
cheaper non-wireless MB. I was pleasantly surprised to find the more
expensive one in the case when it arrived.
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