Hmmm. Don't know anything about Realtek wifi. Since my strategy on buying laptops is to go to a commodity store and buy the cheapest box, preferably a demo with a markdown, that has decent graphics, I'm almost brand blind. I seem to be on a run of HPs, and many of them have had Realtek for their wired ethernet, but I don't think I've run into a Realtek wireless card yet.
My biggest problem with HPs has been graphics support. HP laptops seem to randomly have Nvidia and Radeon cards, and the Radeon linux drivers can sometimes be a little flaky -- not enough so I won't buy it if it's cheap, but I'll do so knowing I'll have to download the proprietary driver from ATI and maybe play some games with the xorg.conf file if I want to do all the fancy bouncy windows compiz stuff. As I said, I'm not a big fan of the atheros cards because the current ath9k doesn't support MAC spoofing, and I consider that a basic part of wireless hygiene. You might think about getting a usb wireless adapter, like the Alfa one I mentioned. It's a bit of a hassle to carry around yet another bit of wire, but as a frequent traveller I've found it useful. I have sometimes been in places where wireless signal was suboptimal, and it was nice to be able to stick my adapter on the wall or window to get a better signal, but sit wherever I want to do my work. And, of course, if you have the driver for your usb wireless adapter, then it doesn't matter what wireless card is in the box. In the past few years I've owned Toshibas, Acers, Gateways, HPs, and a Sager. Of those, the Acer was the easiest to configure, followed by the HPs followed by the Gateway followed by the Sager followed by the Toshiba. However, since that spans about five years, it's hard to translate that to what machines are like *today.* And it's not consistent. I've had three Toshibas in that time; of those two were a hassle and one was a dream. billo On Fri, 4 Jun 2010, Scott Vargovich wrote:
I believe it was a realtek rtl8191se - if I remember correctly. I couldn't even get it working using the Windows driver and ndiswrapper. I know enough about linux to be dangerous, but this one leaves me scratching my now bald dome from pulling my hair out on it. ------------------------------------------------------------ <>< Scott Vargovich <>< ------------------------------------------------------------ ~~~OpenPGP Key ID: F8F5DC7E~~~ ------------------------------------------------------------ ><((((º>`·.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸.·´¯`·...¸><((((º>¸. ·´¯`·.¸. , . .·´¯`·.. ><((((º>`·.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸.·´¯`·...¸><((((º> Chat [gtalk.png] Google Talk: [email protected] [yahoo.png] Y! messenger: airpath_scottv [msn.png] MSN: [email protected] [aim.png] AIM: Airpath ScottV Contact Me Facebook Twitter --- @ WiseStamp Signature. Get it now On Fri, Jun 4, 2010 at 3:26 PM, Bill Oliver <[email protected]> wrote: I'm amazed that your friend can't find a driver. I buy a new laptop every eight months or so (my travel habits are physically hard on laptops). Since I go through them so quickly, I usually just go to my local WalMart/Office Depot/Staples and buy whatever is cheapest that has a decent graphics card. I haven't had a problem getting wifi to work in years. What card could he not find a driver for? The only issue I've had is that the current atheros drivers for 802.11n (ath9k) are not very friendly for MAC spoofing (though I hear that's changing), so for my current box I also carry an Alfa AWUS050NH whose driver is very spoof-friendly. I think one of your problems is that the madwifi driver, per se, is only for cards up to 802.11g, and will not support 802.11n. Thus, I'm not surprised you might have a problem with madwifi. Atheros chips that support 802.11n use the ath9k driver (which is also provided by madwifi.org) . In any case, my most recent box is an HP Pavilion dv7-3067cl. It has an atheros chipset, but it's already a discontinued model. billo On Fri, 4 Jun 2010, Scott Vargovich wrote: Hi there, I have a friend who wants to buy a 64 bit laptop that one of you has had success installing Linux on. His budget is around $800. He's returning a Toshiba Sattelite model whose internal wifi isn't supported at all. I'd like to find him one that has atheros-based wifi that madwifi recognizes without any hassle. The distro we want to use is Ubuntu / Mint. Please reply if you've had this type of experience with the brand / make of the laptop. Thanks in advance, -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Linux Users Group. To post a message, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit our group at http://groups.google.com/group/linuxusersgroup -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Linux Users Group. To post a message, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit our group at http://groups.google.com/group/linuxusersgroup -- <>< Scott Vargovich <>< ------------------------------------------ OpenPGP Key ID: F8F5DC7E ------------------------------------------ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Linux Users Group. To post a message, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit our group at http://groups.google.com/group/linuxusersgroup
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