On Tue, 13 Jul 2004, brian lopez wrote: > hi, I want to convert to a full linux box. the only thing stopping me is > picking a desktop PCI or USB wifi device to connect to PC. which is > better to use with linux? and I've heard of some PCI card antennas?? any > help would be great! thanks.
There is a list of cards believed to work at the Lindows site [1]. But, after putting wireless cards in Linux laptops a couple dozen times, all I know for sure is that half of what you read will be wrong. The manufacturers change chipsets almost monthly, it seems like, and whatever helpful instructions you find will be for card revision N-1, where N is the revision you just bought. Probably the fastest and easiest way to get it working is to buy something cheap at Fry's; if you can't get it to work, take it back and get something else. (That is to say, do exactly what you would do if you were trying to get it to work in Windows.) Another thing to keep in mind is that there exists a module called "ndiswrapper" which lets you run the binary Windows drivers for cards with no native support. It sounds horrible but I actually had it working in about five minutes yesterday, with no trouble at all (more than I can say for most of the native drivers). Their list of supported chipsets is at [2]. Once you have a card working, Linux will of course have no bearing on any antennas you might want to use, so maybe somebody who knows more about that will want to answer that one. M.D. [1] http://help.linspire.com/cgi-bin/lindows.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_sid=E4Sgj*Qg&p_lva=&p_faqid=542&p_created=1054162463&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9MTAmcF9zZWFyY2hfdGV4dD13aXJlbGVzcyZwX3BhZ2U9MQ**&p_li= [2] http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/supported_chipsets.html .... ....... .... ....... .... ....... .... ....... .... ....... .... : Michael A. Dickerson Andrew 252a / 909.607.8653 : : Unix Systems Administrator, Pomona College, Claremont, California : .... ....... .... ....... .... ....... .... ....... .... ....... ....
