Hello,
I am a Debian (formerly Ubuntu) user, and the only thing standing in my way
of using a fully free system is my wireless card. I have been looking at the
FSF's list of supported wireless devices at
http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/index_html/net/wireless/index_html/cards.html,
but my question is whether all wireless cards will work with all wireless
networks.
I don't know very much about wireless networking, but I do know that there
are a, b, g and n protocols available. I have found that some of the devices
listed on the FSF's page are claimed to work with the "n" protocol, but I
don't know whether that is backward compatible with existing infrastructure.
I also am unsure as to which wireless cards will plug into my system. I'm not
greatly knowledgeable about hardware, but I hope to take this opportunity to
learn something and I hope you can bear with my ignorance. :-) Here is the
output of lspci; I don't know which part is relevant so I've simply pasted
the whole thing:
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/PM/GMS, 943/940GML and
945GT Express Memory Controller Hub (rev 03)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS,
943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS/GME,
943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family High Definition
Audio Controller (rev 01)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family PCI Express Port 1
(rev 01)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family PCI Express Port 2
(rev 01)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family PCI Express Port 4
(rev 01)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH7 Family USB UHCI Controller
#1 (rev 01)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB UHCI
Controller #2 (rev 01)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB UHCI
Controller #3 (rev 01)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB UHCI
Controller #4 (rev 01)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB2 EHCI
Controller (rev 01)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev e1)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GBM (ICH7-M) LPC Interface Bridge
(rev 01)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801GBM/GHM (ICH7 Family) SATA IDE
Controller (rev 01)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family SMBus Controller (rev 01)
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX (rev
02)
03:01.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller
03:01.1 SD Host controller: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host
Adapter (rev 19)
03:01.2 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C843 MMC Host Controller (rev 0a)
03:01.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter
(rev 05)
03:01.4 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller (rev ff)
0c:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG [Golan]
Network Connection (rev 02)
I would appreciate any general advice you can offer, and even moreso I would
appreciate specific suggestions of what product to buy given that I know
almost nothing about the differences between them. If I can get my wireless
working with free software, I will definitely switch to using Trisquel.
Thanks for your time,
Steven.
