Slashdot Mirror

I noticed this on the dd-wrt.com website a couple of months back (dated 8.28.08) We would like to announce the release of a new HAL for Atheros WLAN devices. The new HAL is the result of a collaboration between OpenWrt.org, DD-WRT and MakSat Technologies (P) Ltd. It is the first result of a common effort, and the present collaborators would like to share the product of this work. It is the intention to provide reliable and continued support for other projects using this new HAL for Atheros WLAN devices. The HAL provides a defined API to access and contol Atheros WLAN chipsets, and is an integral part for many drivers such as MadWifi. Comparing it with the HAL that's currently used by MadWifi, the most important changes are: * many known bugs have been fixed * improved noise immunity measures * added support for additional architectures, such as ARM11, MIPS64 and MIPS32r2 * enhanced support for Atheros WiSOC (Wireless System on Chip) * added support for Atheros AR7100 Home of the new HAL will be the website of the madwifi.org project, http://madwifi.org./ Future development will be coordinated here, and the bug tracking facility can be used to report bugs or file feature requests. For commercial requests please contact hal@maksat.deThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . So with the new news maybe things will really get rolling

Sorry... I guess what I meant is that there doesn't seem to be a lot of information or support for complete beginners who are trying to switch from windows to linux. Maybe I'm wrong, or it just isn't "dumbed down enough". I'm just frustrated that I tried installing ndiswrapper, madwifi and get nothing but errors (although I'm likely doing something incorrectly, even when following instructions in the below links detail-for-detail...) http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=766169 http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=766529 http://madwifi.org/ticket/1679 http://blog.linuxoss.com/2008/05/ubuntu-804-enabling-atheros-ar5007-based-wireless/ http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=680209 None of those worked.

That 'AR5006EG' is really an AR5007EG that is not detected correctly.

You need this patch for madwifi.

From the MadWifi homepage:

The driver itself is open source but depends on the proprietary Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) that is available in binary form only.

That's for the madwifi driver.
We're talking about the ath9k driver.
There's also ath5k, that does not uses HAL.
...yes, they're all written by the madwifi group...

What's wrong with madwifi?

Newer distros won't work on my laptop with the latest kernels and madwifi. Older distros? No problem: http://madwifi.org/ticket/2026

Now, anyone know how long till they provide an OSS driver for their AR500x chips I can use on my Debian 64bit laptop?

http://madwifi.org/wiki/About/ath5k

The driver itself is open source but depends on the proprietary Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) that is available in binary form only.

It looks like this is probably the change that fixed it. http://madwifi.org/changeset/3525

It was added after the last Ubuntu madwifi update, but before you started compiling from svn (and mentions that it fixes wpa_supplicant)

To test if that is the revision that fixed it, you can change script you are using to checkout that specific revision and the revision before it, and then verify the earlier one was broken and the later one fixed it.

Change the following lines in the script:

WAS:
svn co http://svn.madwifi.org/madwifi/trunk madwifi > /dev/null || exit

IS:
svn co -r 3525 http://svn.madwifi.org/madwifi/trunk madwifi > /dev/null || exit

and

WAS:
svn up > /dev/null || exit
IS:
svn up -r 3525> /dev/null || exit

(change the -r 3525 to 3524 to check it before the patch)

You should consider filing an Ubuntu bug report, describing your problem in detail. You should also include the results of the tests above.

It looks like this is probably the change that fixed it. http://madwifi.org/changeset/3525

It was added after the last Ubuntu madwifi update, but before you started compiling from svn (and mentions that it fixes wpa_supplicant)

To test if that is the revision that fixed it, you can change script you are using to checkout that specific revision and the revision before it, and then verify the earlier one was broken and the later one fixed it.

Change the following lines in the script:

WAS:
svn co http://svn.madwifi.org/madwifi/trunk madwifi > /dev/null || exit

IS:
svn co -r 3525 http://svn.madwifi.org/madwifi/trunk madwifi > /dev/null || exit

and

WAS:
svn up > /dev/null || exit
IS:
svn up -r 3525> /dev/null || exit

(change the -r 3525 to 3524 to check it before the patch)

You should consider filing an Ubuntu bug report, describing your problem in detail. You should also include the results of the tests above.

It looks like this is probably the change that fixed it. http://madwifi.org/changeset/3525

It was added after the last Ubuntu madwifi update, but before you started compiling from svn (and mentions that it fixes wpa_supplicant)

To test if that is the revision that fixed it, you can change script you are using to checkout that specific revision and the revision before it, and then verify the earlier one was broken and the later one fixed it.

Change the following lines in the script:

WAS:
svn co http://svn.madwifi.org/madwifi/trunk madwifi > /dev/null || exit

IS:
svn co -r 3525 http://svn.madwifi.org/madwifi/trunk madwifi > /dev/null || exit

and

WAS:
svn up > /dev/null || exit
IS:
svn up -r 3525> /dev/null || exit

(change the -r 3525 to 3524 to check it before the patch)

You should consider filing an Ubuntu bug report, describing your problem in detail. You should also include the results of the tests above.

Is the chipset used in the eeepc not supported by the Madwifi drivers? Seems to be mixed:

http://madwifi.org/wiki/Compatibility/Atheros#AtherosAR5BXB63

I won't do all of your homework for you, but here's a start. It looks like, based on Best Buy's offerings, you are best going with a card that uses the Atheros chipset. I have a D-Link in my desktop computer that uses this chipset and Linux support is very good. However, every model (even by the same manufacturer) is different. There are only 11 desktop cards and 18 laptop cards carried by best buy. If one of those cards is on this list then that is the card for you. Install the card, install Ubuntu (but keep a wire connected for now). You will then need to enable the "universe" repositories in Synaptic that include non-free software. Install the "madwifi" driver and you should be good to go. The only wireless cards I've used that have worked out of the box, with no extra drivers to install and no windows drivers to install with ndiswrapper or the like is Intel wireless cards. Doesn't look like Best Buy has any though, so your easiest bet is using a MadWiFI compatible card. If you are truly new to Linux and Ubuntu, then I would consult http://ubuntuforums.org/ for setting up Synaptic and getting the driver installed. This is an extremely common topic and is well documented.

On a side note, I would try to get away from buying computer parts from Best Buy. The options are limited, the prices high, and you always have some deusche salesmen trying to talk you into the more expensive card "cause it's teh r0x0rz!" even though it's completely wrong for your needs. I would drop by Newegg.com for great price, great shipping service, and huge selection.

It seems that Fedora 9 uses ath5k instead of the good old madwifi for Atheros chipsets. Given that ath5k is far from stable yet, I wonder why?

In addition to Intel, you can also try Atheros chipsets http://madwifi.org/. They're partly binary, but they work very well and are extremely easy to install. *Note: The Atheros drivers do not support USB chipsets and no plans exist to do so.

The madwifi Linux drivers for Atheros chipsets allow multiple access points to be configured on a single wifi card.

Not all hardware is supported by all operating systems. Get used to it. I recently retired a Windows 2000 Pro installation. The biggest reason was ****Hardware Support****. I travel and do Power Point presentations and support others that do the same. As such often a presenter will have his presentation on a USB flash drive. Just for fun, take any modern collection of USB flash drives and plug them into a Windows 2000 laptop.. The endless search for an internet connection on the road to download drivers finally got to me. I Installed Dapper Drake and have been very happy since.

Do a little research and find a supported WiFi card. Most Intel cards are supported out of the box now so your Centrino Laptop should just work.
http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/sb/CS-022095.htm

Many adaptors bought at Best Buy does work on Ubuntu just fine. Check your chipset first. The only way to get support for the Linux holdouts is make it a support, return and market share issue for them. If you have an incompatible card, call the company and ask for drivers. If they don't have drivers, ask for a refund. They will get the picture if it becomes a big enough issue for them.

By the way, I have an older Thinkpad T21 which doesn't have built in wireless. I use a D-link Air-Express PCMCIA card with a supported chipset. It works fine.

http://www.atheros.com/news/linux.html

Think about what you are saying... I would rather use a $200 OS instead of buying a $40 card to use a free OS. I fail to see the logic unless you just happened to already have a $200 OS just sitting unused someplace.

In the case of my laptop, it was buy something to replace Windows 2000, or buy a compatible card. Since the laptop didn't come with a card, I would need to buy one regardless. I just made sure it was Linux compatible when I bought it.

http://www.etheros.com/news/DLink2.html
http://madwifi.org/wiki/Compatibility

...and in the same directory as the file you point us at, we find BSD-only files originally by Reyk Floeter, with other author's GPL and copyright notices attached to them.

There are multiple disputes in this case, remember:

1. You cannot modify the license notices of a dual-licensed work.
2. You cannot modify the license or copyright notices of a work you have not made substantial additions or changes to.

it is still a derived work and a few stylistic changes, some code shuffling, and some bug fixes don't allow to change the copyright.

IANAL, but it looks like the copyright wasn't changed, another person made changes and added their copyright. The author of a derivative work is the one that made changes to the preexisting work. While they enjoy no ownership of the pre-existing work, they enjoy complete ownership over their changes and ownership of the derivative work as a whole. The author of the original gets no ownership rights whatsoever in the derivative work, only in the pre-existing work.

For instance, say a movie producer licenses a book to create a movie. The producer owns the movie, not the book's author. The producer must have a license from the book's author to use his copyrighted materials, but he can license the movie however he wishes, if allowed by the license granted by the book author. The book author has no rights to control stills from the movie for instance. Here we have an author of some code that licensed it under the BSD license. The license specifically allows others to copy, modify, and distribute, with the sole requirement that the copyright notice and permission notice appear, which they do.

The BSD license requires no licensing of derivative works under the BSD license. Here they choose to license the derivative work under the GPL, which is perfectly fine. I fail to see the problem. Microsoft could take this driver tomorrow and put it in Vista without ever making the code available or acknowledging that they got it from BSD, and charge for distributing it to all their customers. If you don't want people to be able to create derivative works and do with them as they please, then don't use BSD as your license. I fail to see how any ethical boundary has been crossed. They seem to be arguing by the fact that people can now make changes to the GPL code and that they won't be able to use those changes under the BSD license. Dude, you should be using the GPL! That's what it is designed to prevent.

The code in question is dual licensed

• The open-source HAL, the work of Reyk Floeter, was *never* dual licensed; he has only released it under the ISC license.
• There *are* some dual-licensed files in the driver, but that is not what the OpenBSD people have a problem with.
• The code *has* been published with the GPL fully replacing the ISC license; for example, see the madwifi repository. It was also published elsewhere, but since removed. For sure, not just a diff proposed on a mailing list.
• It is still being published (madwifi again) with GPL wrapped around the ISC license and with added copyright authors
• It is still being published, now under the ISC license and with added copyright authors
• The changes in these versions which are still published are mostly for adaptation, there doesn't seem enough original work to claim joint copyright (I guess, unless the original author agrees)

Actually, the code in question is not "dual-licensed". It's an adaptation of Reyk's ISC-licensed code with new copyright claims made at the top of the file. Reyk never published the code under the GPL or under a "dual" GPL/ISC-like license at all.

* Alternatively, this software may be distributed under the terms of the
* GNU General Public License ("GPL") version 2 as published by the Free
* Software Foundation.

Some points...

a) ath5k_hw.c /ah5k_hw.h / ath5kreg.h and ath5k.h do not come from openbsd tree, they have code from bsd (that's why Reyk's copyright is there) but are written from scratch. They first appeared on madwifi svn (http://madwifi.org/changeset/2232) and are part of madwifi-old-openhal project. They have a different layout (eg. code is not split per-chip as in openbsd cvs but it's common for all chips, lot more documentation on registers etc) and you can see that changes have been done since http://madwifi.org/log/branches/madwifi-old-openha l/openhal (initial register writes for example are done in a different way than original openbsd code). So it's a derivative work or a "fork", not a "copy" as the license says ("copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies."). So if those files had from start a GPLv2 license it wouldn't be a problem (since they are not "copies" of the original code and author's copyright -Reyk's- is still there so there is no copyright violation either).

b) Original author of those files (mickflemm) later uploaded them on madwifi svn repository again but now with a different license (http://madwifi.org/changeset/2670), GPLv2 as you see (Reyk's copyright is still there of course)...

So where is the problem ???

I see no violation, only people calling other people thieves (http://www.osnews.com/story.php/18528/Linux-Devel opers-Steal-OpenBSD-Code-for-Wireless-Driver) and this is really anoying !!!

Also have in mind that Madwifi team have provided patches on openbsd (you can see that on openbsd cvs http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/src/sys/dev/ ic/), so "bad linux developers against openbsd" scenario doesn't apply here...

To summarize the whole thing IMHO is nonsense, Theo just wanted to make a point against linux developers after a serious (even copyright was removed) violation commited on openbsd's cvs (http://lists.berlios.de/pipermail/bcm43xx-dev/200 7-April/004370.html), not a test branch like -mm, the core cvs. Also have in mind that Theo back then criticized Mike for doing this on a public mailing list etc and now he didn't say a thing about publicity.

I've been very impressed with madwifi's atheros support. I am running a number of cards based on their chipsets for various purposes.

They also have a large list of supported hardware on their site http://madwifi.org/wiki/Compatibility

From what I understand (and from what the Madwifi wiki tells me), the current HAL is closed source because the Atheros chipset has the technical capabilities to broadcast out of the legal range of spectrum allowed by the FCC and similar bodies. Wouldn't distributing OpenHal be illegal? The SFLC seems to answer a different question in TFA - what about the legal ramifications of distributing a free software HAL in the first place?

You've got to be kidding! The driver is madwifi It's not yet in the kernel, but it compiles and installs easily. It is easily the most capable hardware/driver combo I have seen for 802.11.

It DOES include a binary-only firmware componant (HAL), but that's mandated by the U.S. FCC (and equivilants in other countries) so you "can't" command the card to violate current regulations. Other wireless cards have that limitation as well and more restrictive licensing on the firmware componant as well. At least the madwifi firmware is freely redistributable.

For anyone trying the latest K/X/Ubuntu flavor, or Debian 4 for that matter (as I did), wireless networking is easy, and cheap too, of you don't stray too far from these instructions.

1. Choose hardware from this madwifi/ Atheros list: http://madwifi.org/wiki/Compatibility. Last week I picked up two El Cheapo Sweek 802.11g cards for 20 euros each, and Ubuntu flashed its restricted driver message at one once, I accepted, and it just worked, even with WPA2 + TKIP encryption at the router. Note there are no USB wifi dongles supported. But PCI & pcmcia, etc.

2. Part of the above is working with Gnome NetworkManager.

Stay focused on 1 & 2, and don't use little USB wireless sticks, and wireless on Linux IS easy.

disk encryption: bonus points for starting with Debian 4, since the EZ installer gives you the option to encrypt the whole (laptop?) disk from the Get Go. I opted for Debian's easy disk encryption (Ubuntu doesn't offer it, really) and chose to fight the wireless puzzle. It was a hard fight, but I think I picked the correct battle to fight. So now just add a nice rsync backup to my http://www.dreamhost.com/r.cgi?134994 Debian server's non-public disk-space for $7 a month, and well that's a secure, yet functional laptop.

Oh, and www.Hamachi.cc makes for easy newbie intranets, and Firestarter is a nifty newbie GUI for IPTables.

- --

You can't be ahead of the curve if you're stuck in a loop.

As an owner of a Macbook Pro, I've been waiting for this to get released. The Dynticks integration will (hopefully) help lower power consumption and heat output. Though this will help reduce heat and power on all platforms, those running Linux on a MBP C2D know it's hard to keep the fans from spinning up from relatively little activity.

Next up is to get ATI to actually support any power saving features in fglrx on the MBP C2D and give the mAdWiFi guys more time to work out the features on the Atheros AR5008.

OSX, right now, still has a significant advantage in keeping heat and power consumption down. Even though, I imagine some will testify that even OSX is having a hard time with it...

Here's to testing out 2.6.21 tonight :)

Let us take a look at the recent topic of a Madwifi vulnerability affecting certain wifi users in Linux.

Julien Tinnes reported it at 13:48:00 EST on December 7, 2006.

At 14:17:50 on the same day the patch was available in the main source code repository.

A little while later at 17:08:26 the vulnerability is officially confirmed by Madwifi and advisories had been prepared.

Looking downstream, the response times for an official fixes/advisories by distribution specific security teams were:
Gentoo: December 10
SUSE: Confirmed December 8, Fixed December 11
Ubuntu: January 9

There is certainly some room for improvement here with distribution specific fixes, but that also includes time spent testing the changes to the driver. To be fair to Microsoft (actually, I'm just being overly optimistic), they probably had a patch ready within 30 minutes of the initial vulnerability report as was the case with Madwifi. But instead of giving the customer the option of trying the "beta" patch so they can test it themselves, it is kept private. Days tick by at Microsoft HQ and nothing appears to happen. Eventually, a patch is released on the patch Tuesday of the next month (or the month after that). System administrators get no choice and no chance to test it themselves.

Let us take a look at the recent topic of a Madwifi vulnerability affecting certain wifi users in Linux.

Julien Tinnes reported it at 13:48:00 EST on December 7, 2006.

At 14:17:50 on the same day the patch was available in the main source code repository.

A little while later at 17:08:26 the vulnerability is officially confirmed by Madwifi and advisories had been prepared.

Looking downstream, the response times for an official fixes/advisories by distribution specific security teams were:
Gentoo: December 10
SUSE: Confirmed December 8, Fixed December 11
Ubuntu: January 9

There is certainly some room for improvement here with distribution specific fixes, but that also includes time spent testing the changes to the driver. To be fair to Microsoft (actually, I'm just being overly optimistic), they probably had a patch ready within 30 minutes of the initial vulnerability report as was the case with Madwifi. But instead of giving the customer the option of trying the "beta" patch so they can test it themselves, it is kept private. Days tick by at Microsoft HQ and nothing appears to happen. Eventually, a patch is released on the patch Tuesday of the next month (or the month after that). System administrators get no choice and no chance to test it themselves.

For someone who has been using WPA via a vulnerable version of madwifi, they just need to get the madwifi source, recompile it for the running kernel, and install it. No kernel recompile is required. See

http://madwifi.org/wiki/UserDocs/Distro/Debian/Mad Wifi

>>What part of "the flaw was in the open portion of the driver" did you manage to miss?
>A link.
http://madwifi.org/wiki/news/20061207/release-0-9- 2-1-fixes-critical-security-issue

Note that the FUD is not that this isn't open. It is. The FUD is that this is a bug in Linux. The code has specifically not been included in Linux. It's third party add on software. Something like posting that a bug was found in Windows when actually the bug was in "JasonSMAD3Di7or444.exe", available for townload from cowsto.org. When the code is signed off by Linus, then you can claim a bug in Linux. Unless of course you are a Linux zelot who wants to claim that GNU/Linux and all the distributions based on it are just Linux. In which case we are looking forward to you standing up for your public spanking (or alternatively, begining to understand why it sometimes matters that words mean something more exact that what you want them to mean.)

you can type, "lsmod | grep ath_pci" to find out if you are running the supposedly exploited module

You can also type "modinfo ath_pci | grep version" to find which version you have.

The patched driver is 0.9.2.1 or newer.

This issue has nothing to do with non-free. The fix was in the free portion of the code, according to this link. Moreover, the bug was not found due to it being open source. It was found by testing. So just by virtue of being FOSS, software does not become miraculously bug-free.

For the driver to be completely free, Atheros would have to create a chip incapable of violating FCC regulations, but then it couldn't be sold in Europe, because it wouldn't support all the channels available there. Global OEMs wouldn't touch it. I think Atheros is being as helpful as they can without having their product pulled from the market by regulatory authorities. The video chip makers have the option to support fully open drivers. The wireless chip makers do not.

> MadWiFi source code can be found here.

Or rather, a small open-source Linux compatibility shim around the actual, binary only driver.

Look further into that link you pasted:

http://madwifi.org/browser/trunk/hal/public

Those .uu files are binary objects stored as text, and they make up the majority of the driver. This same binary driver is also used by some of the BSDs, with a different open-source shim.

> The module in question is found here. (slow to load)

Ah, so the flaw is in the open source shim part. Fooey. =/

As an aside, and as I suspect you might already know, there is an effort to replace the binary-only part of that driver with Free software, and the Madwifi people have cooperated as much as they're able. They even host the development in their own repository:

http://madwifi.org/browser/branches/madwifi-old-op enhal

Cheers!

> MadWiFi source code can be found here.

Or rather, a small open-source Linux compatibility shim around the actual, binary only driver.

Look further into that link you pasted:

http://madwifi.org/browser/trunk/hal/public

Those .uu files are binary objects stored as text, and they make up the majority of the driver. This same binary driver is also used by some of the BSDs, with a different open-source shim.

> The module in question is found here. (slow to load)

Ah, so the flaw is in the open source shim part. Fooey. =/

As an aside, and as I suspect you might already know, there is an effort to replace the binary-only part of that driver with Free software, and the Madwifi people have cooperated as much as they're able. They even host the development in their own repository:

http://madwifi.org/browser/branches/madwifi-old-op enhal

Cheers!

The madwifi howto is here. It seems that you can type, "lsmod | grep ath_pci" to find out if you are running the supposedly exploited module. My simple Etch system does not have this or wlanconfig tools by default, though those tools look very nice and I'm sure this little problem will be fixed quickly.

I have to agree with you about the uselessness of the PC World article. Besides not having any useful information, it's filled with FUD about free software wifi and confused "popularity argument" babble. In short it's more of a, "everyone else has these problems too, so Windoze away," pacifier than it is a news article.

... this was fixed 4 months ago?

http://madwifi.org/changeset/1842

The module in question is found here. (slow to load)

The module in question is found here. (slow to load)

* Atheros-based cards. Strangely, I don't hear these mentioned very often, but they have excellent support, complete with monitor mode, creating multiple interfaces from one card, etc. Oh and airpwn supports it :) - http://madwifi.org/

But you can use this list of Atheros-based adapters. I used it 8 months ago to buy an SMCWPCI-G card for about $20, and I ended up with a perfectly working card under Linux.

Buy one of every device in the store, and hope to find one that has your chipset? We actually did this once. Found one that was Prysm2. Bought the rest. Some turned out to be Broadcom.

Yes, unfortunately sometimes vendors silently change the chipset used in a particular model. But honestly I think that googling for 10 min before buying is all you need to confirm that you won't run into this pb for the model you are about to buy.

"Usually" == "Never" in this case.

No, this is not true. Look, 6 months ago I was looking for a well-supported PCI wifi adapter. So I basically followed the exact steps I described in my GP post, and I decided to buy one using the Atheros chipset. It turns out that the driver developers (madwifi project) have a very complete list of adapters using this chipset, and therefore fully-supported under Linux. The list literally references 100-200 adapters, 50% of them are probably not sold anymore, but the other 50% are currently sold on the market.

Say I want an 802.11g PCI card that works with Ubuntu 6.06 on an ASUS motherboard.

Just buy an Atheros one. It will work with any modern Linux distro. The exact distro or motherboard you use doesn't matter. Most distros have packaged the Atheros kernel modules. And as I understand it Atheros use a unified architecture, so the latest driver will always support all Atheros chipsets.

Also, anything with an Atheros chipset also works very well with the MadWifi drivers.

http://madwifi.org/wiki/Compatibility

See? Lots of supported WiFi cards.

WiFi cards not listed in this list are broken and need to be replaced.

I recently purchased a Dynex DX-WGDTC PCI card from Best Buy for 35 bucks, the chipset had some sort of aluminum heat sink over it. I took a gamble and bought it anyway with a feeling that it was manufactured by D-Link. Turns out I was right, it has an Atheros 5212 chipset and I was ecstatic. The madwifi drivers work spectacular with this card. A patched madwifi-ng driver will allow you to crack WEP using ARP injection *wink* I recommend you go out and buy one immediately.

Another vote for Slackware from me.

It might not seem like the intuitive choice, but I kick myself for wasting my time with other distros before finally trying Slack. It's the most trouble-free, stable distro I've used, and that's why it's the only one I use anymore.

In my opinion, it's actually simpler than other distros because it forces you to learn the basics rather than depending out of the box on some GUI based tools that (in my experience, anyway) aren't very reliable yet in the Linux world.

And let's be serious here... the basics aren't that difficult.

By day I'm an admin in a Windows Server 2003 data center, but at home, I run all Slackware because frankly it's a lot simpler and less of a headache than even Windows is. And it's CERTAINLY easier to install and set up than Windows.

I even have it running on my laptop. The only piece of hardware on the laptop Slack didn't have working out of the box was the wifi, and after installing the MadWifi drivers, that worked too. Contrast that to installing XP on the same laptop: I needed to hold Windows' hand through identifying the sound module, the graphics chipset, the DVD rom, the modem, the integrated wifi, plus install 2+ hours' worth of fricking patches. Ugh.

To sum up:

- Slackware is a simpler, more stable distro than others I've tried (Red Hat, Mandriva, Ubuntu)

- If you can install Windows, you'll be pleasantly surprised at how well Slackware sets up

I assumed the WiFi card was a Broadcomm, but it's an Atheros. I may be in luck, after all.

For people using linux, just buy a card with a chipset supported by MadWifi. It works like a charm. Just be careful to watch for hardware revisions on the box of the wifi card you are planning to buy. Sometimes the chipset on the card will change with the model number being the same!