On Wed, 14 Sep 2005 15:22, Roger Searle wrote: > Hi, now that I have a wireless router at work and home (both are 802.11b > & g), I need a pcmcia card for my laptop. Plenty of them about of > course, but I want to make sure it will work under linux. Any advice on > which ones are better / easier to get going under linux / reliability / > range etc would be appreciated.
For a cheap high power (longer range) 802.11b card I'd recommend the SMC SMC2532W-B it's a 200mw card with external antenna connectors based on the Prism chipset, similar to the popular Senao cards. The driver for this is in the kernel and it will work out of the box with most all distributions. If you are looking for a 802.11g card try one based on the Atheros chipset[1] or the Prisim54 chipset[2] The prism54 driver is in the kernel although you will need the firmware for the card from prism54.org. The madwifi drivers are still 'beta' but they are stable, they are included in Ubuntu although I'm unsure of any other distro. They are as easy as pie to install anyway. I've used all of the above and they all worked great. Although it's slower I quite like the SMC card for it's longer range, I guess it depends how much bandwidth you need. [1]http://madwifi.sourceforge.net/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=compatibility_list [2]http://prism54.org/supported_cards.php HTH hads -- "Lead" pencils have no lead in themonly graphite.
