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I'm amazed you haven't come across the linux wlan chipset list. Although it hasn't been updated for nearly two years it's about the most exhaustive list of what is in each card that I've seen. If 802.11b is fine then there are still Prism 2.5/3 based cards out there that work very well. I also recently tested a Atheros based PCMCIA card (I'm purposely not naming manufacturers) which also worked well but required a small binary lump.

As mentioned elsewhere, support for wifi isn't spotty - it's support for certain chipsets that is (alas this is also extends to various USB wifi devices too). If you buy (for example) a Broadcom based card I'm afraid you're in for a rough ride because Broadcom don't want to release open source drivers. There's no point getting upset - Broadcom are within their rights to do so and Linux isn't binary only friendly. It's the way things are.

The best advice I can give is get a peek inside the box so you know which chipset you are buying. Manufacturers are lazy and try to avoid changing model numbers significantly even if they swap chipsets because it means all the other materials can stay exactly the same. If you are going on someone else's information be extremly weary of ANY deviation to the model name/number/revison. Things like a +, extra letters or revision increase of any amount can mean chipset changes.

Not sure if you're trolling of not, but my DWL 520 works out of the box with both Suse 10 RC1 and Knoppix 3.9. If you're for real, try here http://www.linux-wlan.org/ for drivers and help.

Will this contain support for Atmel and Prism built in or will we have to go and get Prism Drivers or Atmel Drivers? The only problem without having built-in support is that for the Atmel you have to patch the kernel(only 2.6 and greater) and recompile it(takes awhile on a 1.7Ghz). It would be major convience for built-in support for these commonly used chipsets. I hope that this new distribution includes full WiFi support.

Tools are ... tools. Sometimes they require a little bit of intelligence to use effectively. An answer is there if you look for it. And you'll find it a lot faster than you could have a decade ago. And, a decade from now, you'll probably have the answer faster still.

If you search for "siemens 1022 usb" and get resellers, try searching for "siemens 1022 usb driver" or "siemens 1022 usb linux driver".

It helps if you search in Google Groups, which tends to be better for some techinal searches.

Anyhow, that leads you to a thread about siemens usb wireless cards That, in turn, leads you to linux-wlan.org, including a chart of various adapters. It might help; you might be out of luck. But it is a useful lead.

If you need more help, trying posting to the group asking for help. Or, if you are unable to find something you're looking for, you might want to try Google Answers. Or, if you prefer, you can gripe on /. and hope someone knows the answer.

Tools are ... tools. Sometimes they require a little bit of intelligence to use effectively. An answer is there if you look for it. And you'll find it a lot faster than you could have a decade ago. And, a decade from now, you'll probably have the answer faster still.

If you search for "siemens 1022 usb" and get resellers, try searching for "siemens 1022 usb driver" or "siemens 1022 usb linux driver".

It helps if you search in Google Groups, which tends to be better for some techinal searches.

Anyhow, that leads you to a thread about siemens usb wireless cards That, in turn, leads you to linux-wlan.org, including a chart of various adapters. It might help; you might be out of luck. But it is a useful lead.

If you need more help, trying posting to the group asking for help. Or, if you are unable to find something you're looking for, you might want to try Google Answers. Or, if you prefer, you can gripe on /. and hope someone knows the answer.

It plays havoc with people wanting a linux compatible Wifi card as well. Basically no wifi manufacturer has released a card that at one stage had say a nice prism or orinoco chipset in it that hasn't changed it for something uncompatible like a Broadcomm or TI.

eg:
Netgear WG311 was an Atheros supported by the madwifi driver but is now a Texus Intruments which is yet to have a stable driver (partial success has been had with this one, just not by me). At *least* Netgear had the kindness to call the TI version "WG311v2" and change the box slightly (documented here it still makes it really annoying when you see "supported" next to "wg311" at places such as here, then you buy one and find out it's changed from 4 weeks ago)

The (in)famous Linksys WMP11 used to be a linux-friendly prism but is now a Broadcomm or inprocomm (I think it's been both according to The List

Many other wifi cards have undergone such massive (I consider a chipset change massive) changes without there model numbers changed and it makes getting a wireless card for linux *VERY* difficult and frustrating.

linux-wlan list

http://www.linux-wlan.org/

Both of these statements are absolutely false and indicate to me that you have no firsthand experience with using Kismet.

I have personally verified firsthand that Kismet can display cloaked SSIDs (provided the network is being used while you're running Kismet), and that Kismet does display the MAC addresses of the network cards connected to the AP (again, assuming that the network is actively being used while you are running Kismet).

All you need in order to verify these claims yourself is any Prism II 802.11b card running in monitor mode in Linux with the Linux WLAN-ng drivers, and the latest version of Kismet. When any actively used network is in range, the program will display the above information 100% of the time.

You'll also find good comparison data on the Seattle Wireless website.

You'll need to know your product ID, but that shouldn't be to difficult to discover.
nk

I can confirm that 2.6.2 works well with my Linksys WUSB12 wireless USB adapter. Using linux-wlan-ng-0.2.1-pre17 - no fancy patches or special configure commands. Took me a while to get it all sorted out, but with the last section of the README at ftp://ftp.linux-wlan.org/pub/linux-wlan-ng/README I managed to get it working. So, it is, at least, possible :)

Is it too much to wish that in 2.6 more WLAN drivers can just be in the kernel, instead of having to screw around with a whole separate build? (Maybe there's a technical reason, though. Regardless, it's still a pain.)

I bought 2 PCI Linksys WMP11 cards last week at Walmart. While I was standing in the store looking at them I was relatively sure that I remembered that that card had Linux support. (Both cards had the same model # but appeared to be two slightly different cards.) I thought that was strange and since I wasn't 100% sure if they would work with Linux I decided I better do some research before opening the packages. I found out that only certain variations of the Linksys WMP11 card is supported with Linux. (Depends on the chipset) So I called Linksys to find out which chipset my cards had but they couldn't tell me. "Either card will work with Windows and that's all we can tell you." (Must have been a call center.) So I decided to just leave the boxes sealed and take the cards back rather than deal with figuring out which revision of the model I had.

In my searching I found this page which has a pretty good list of wireless cards and their support status. On that list I found a Netgear card that interested me since I've *personally* always had good luck with Netgear equipment.

So I just bought a Negear PCI MA311 and it works just fine. I didn't even have to look for a driver. I shutdown, put the card in, booted, and Fedora detected the hardware change and set it up automatically.

I also have an Orinoco Lucent Gold PC Card that works just fine with Linux.

I can speak as to the firewire support, but my TV out worked for DVD, and I'm using an HP printer attached to a Windows 2000 machine using Samba and CUPS drivers.

Also I couldn't get any other distro to install on my laptop, it had to do with the 2.4.21 Kernel Mandrake's using (other distro's still on 2.4.20). This is fine by me I've been using Mandrake since 5.X (don't remember exactly, I just threw out some old install disks, that took me back, what was that '97 '98? Linux has come a long way in the few years)

Anyway hope that helps.

You probably want to look at the OpenSource Linux Driver for Atmel AT76C503A-based Wireless. Although it does not cover version 2.5 it does cover versions 2.1 and 2.6; so you may have some luck.

Having said that, acording to this, your version have a Prism2/2.5/3 chipset. In which case you will want to look at The Linux WLAN Project.

You may also like to know that there is a debian package for this "apt-get install linux-wlan-ng" should do the trick. Note that some kernel fiddeling may be required, in which case have a look at the The Linux Kernel HOWTO.

Hope that is some help...

(Appologies for being completly off topic ;)

You probably want to look at the OpenSource Linux Driver for Atmel AT76C503A-based Wireless. Although it does not cover version 2.5 it does cover versions 2.1 and 2.6; so you may have some luck.

Having said that, acording to this, your version have a Prism2/2.5/3 chipset. In which case you will want to look at The Linux WLAN Project.

You may also like to know that there is a debian package for this "apt-get install linux-wlan-ng" should do the trick. Note that some kernel fiddeling may be required, in which case have a look at the The Linux Kernel HOWTO.

Hope that is some help...

(Appologies for being completly off topic ;)

I haven't found a list of notebooks but I did find a list of wireless cards and their chipsets at: linux-wlan.org

Given that they used the linux-wlan drivers, I suspect that this isn't a true AP (running in BSS mode), unless support for this is now in linux-wlan (they do say they use bleeding edge drivers).

Given they use Prism II hardware, I don't understand why they don't use the hostap drivers.

BSS mode has scalability advantages, because it solves the 'hidden sender' problem. ie even though 802.11 nodes always listen to check that the channel is clear before sending, there is a danger that two nodes at opposite extremes won't be able to hear each other, and will try to send at the same time, resulting in collisions. A true AP, running in BSS mode, helps aleviate this problem.)

Have you tried the orinoco_cs module? Its included with the Redhat binary kernels.

Not to familiar with Orinoco cards, but I have a Linksys WPC11 v.3. I used the linux-wlan-ng modules, available as RPMs here.I don't have a WLAN to test it out on yet, but I will when I get back to school in about six weeks, so I'm not sure if it works. It does, however, flash the Link light, just as it does under W2K when it is seraching for a WAP.

For commentary (and a sort of How-To) on my interacting with both Compaq *and* Intel on trying to get the multiport wireless option to work under Linux, check here.

Summary: Neither Intel or Compaq could/would help me, even discouraged me by telling me it couldn't be done. But, with a nice set of tools from these guys, I got it to work, and was even able to contribute to the project so that this device would be supported in the future.

Oh yeah. I also CC'ed Compaq and Intel's technical support ;) .

By the way, the builtin eepro100 was supported well by rh7.2's stock kernel, FYI (proof that integrators and distro maintainers are valuable methinks).

Mandrake 8.0 works for me with my SMC 2632W Intersil PRISM based card - PCMCIA detects it as wlan and it Just Works, albeit without WEP. To build it the correct drivers, you need the kernel source RPM, PCMCIA-CS source for your build and the driver source from The Linux WLAN Project. It's a bit labourious to do first time but once it's done it works perfectly.

Geeks beware: as of this writing the Linux drivers for the Linksys WPC11 are IMHO unusable for setting up a simple home firewall/router. This is the cheapest Linksys 802.11b card out and it's the only one that Fry's carries. The WPC11 requires an experimental Linux kernel plus patches plus editing some constants at the beginning of a header file and recompiling a driver to get them to work. Apparently the WPC11 is basically just a glue card that makes the PCMCIA core visible on the PCI bus. See here for more info on getting the Prism chipset working with Linux and problems with the WPC11. If you want to build a working router with the WPC11 in less than a day with a spare PC, you'll have to swallow your open-source pride and install a copy of Windows 98 and WinProxy. I did so last week and got it working in less than an hour.