On 10/02/2014 10:05 PM, walt wrote: > I did some googling and enabled the "appropriate" kernel drivers, then > rebooted and now the output from ifconfig includes this interface: > > wlan0: flags=4099<UP,BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 > ether b8:a3:86:99:a8:d8 txqueuelen 1000 (Ethernet) > RX packets 0 bytes 0 (0.0 B) > RX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 frame 0 > TX packets 0 bytes 0 (0.0 B) > TX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0 > > My yes-or-no question: does the appearance of "wlan0" imply that > my new kernel drivers are the right ones for this particular D-Link > WiFi adapter? It's certainly a great sign, but it may or may not be enough. I'm by no means an expert, but I believe I have to install some extra firmware (b43-firmware) to use on my laptop as it's not in the kernel (unless I'm clueless with kernel config). Without b43-firmware, the interface shows up and is recognized, but can't be used iirc. > If not, I'll either buy a better USB WiFi adapter or continue to > google it. > > Thanks. > > If you buy a new one, go with a PCI card. PCI is a much better bus than USB - more power so the chipset does the majority of the processing instead of the typical USB designs that offload a bunch of it to your CPU. Also, if you buy a new one, I've had fantastic experiences with Intel chipsets.
Alec
