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Here's a website: http://linux-wless.passys.nl/

It's Dutch but the dropdown lists speak for themselves. Anything but green results are suckage. Red = doesn't work. Gray = unknown. Yellow = partialy working.

The Linux wireless drivers page lists which drivers support master/access point mode (see the AP column). The list isn't perfect (the hostap driver definitely supports AP mode :-) but it seems to be a case of omissions. The table also says what form factor the supported chipsets come in (so you can tell which ones you will be able to get in USB form). I'd guess the rt2500usb or p54usb drivers would be your best bet.

Another useful page is the Linux wireless chipset directory which tries to list which cards have which chipsets (there's even a single page table with all the added chipsets but I won't link to it from here). This lets you build a list of boxes with the desired chipsets inside them (finding out whether this is true in reality can in itself can be a fraught process though). The chipset is really the important part in all of this.

I'm not going to point to an Amazon page because I have not bought a USB wifi card with the capabilities you describe from Amazon. I'm in no position to tell you that XYZ USB device on Amazon definitely works as I haven't done it myself. I have used hostapd on Linux and OpenBSD before now on a creaky old Prism 2.5 card and that worked for me but again that's not what you asked.

Finally here's a guide to using hostapd to set a card up in access point mode (just using iwconfig to set master mode is not enough). Googling for hostapd linux will turn up plenty more guides which may be easier to follow.

Good luck!

The reason why Ubuntu 8.10 has better wireless capabilities is because in the newer Linux kernel, it has more wireless support. This is in the kernel itself now, not external drivers.

http://linux-wless.passys.nl/

This page is helpful for searching for support.

Sssssh! If you tell people that you can use wireless on Linux without having to watch uber-733t text scroll across the screen, no-one here is going to want to use it. I'm sure most people here, like myself, reconfigure X so it only displays stuff in monochrome green and black after being piped through aalib.

The caveat is, of course, that you need a wireless controller with Linux friendly drivers - thankfully, Intel "got it" a long time ago and I've not found a wireless chipset of theirs which wasn't ungeekily simple to get working in Linux; it's companies like Broadcom that give wireless on Linux a bad name, as anyone who's been as frustrated as I have been with ndiswrapper will testify.

There's a (hopefully) useful compatability matrix here: http://linux-wless.passys.nl/

http://linux-wless.passys.nl/. Just search the complete listing and look for the Atheros chipset.

Have you even looked at what cards are on the list? Take a look at
http://linux-wless.passys.nl/query_hostif.php?host if=USB
at please tell me which of these cards are actually available in stores!

My guess will be a zydas or ralink* stick is eaiest to find. But there are only 211 "green" cards. 77 of them are Prism based (very hard to find IMHO). Further 9 are Orinoco and Hermes (really old stuff). IOW it is mostly old stuff.

But I just manages to find a store that has the Belkin 802.11g F5D7050 so maybe it has some uses after all.

If you care about having high-quality open-source drivers for your wireless card, it's a no-brainer... go with Ralink or Realtek-based cards, since those companies have gone out of their way to provide specs and help write drivers. Or even Atheros or Intel, which have also worked hard to satisfy the open-source communities, though both have kept a proprietary core out of regulatory compliance worries (that's what OpenHAL is about, replacing the proprietary core of the Atheros drivers).

But *definitely* don't choose Broadcom if you want open-source drivers. They haven't lifted a finger or provided a single spec to help the open-source community. The imperfect state of bcm43xx drivers is thanks to the arduous and time-consuming task of reverse engineering. That it works well for a lot of people is a testament to the incredible talent and hard work of the bcm43xx developers, and I for one am very thankful to them.

By the way, this site is a really useful database of wireless support under Linux. You can look up a specific brand and model of wireless card and find out what chipset it uses and how well it's supported.

Try here.

http://linux-wless.passys.nl/

The two greatest resources I've found for finding Linux wireless card drivers are:

http://linux-wless.passys.nl/
http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/joomla/index.ph p?/component/option,com_openwiki/Itemid,33/id,list /

Between those two, I've never had a problem finding drivers. Maybe you could point your friend in that direction.

For further peace of mind, you can check this list of devices and "lspci" to see if further action is required.

Yet another "we don't need to fix Linux because Windows is already just as bad!" argument.

Um, no. Man, this is just like back on comp.os.linux.advocacy with all the wintrolls. I enjoy easily-configured stuff that works immediately. And when Linux doesn't provide that, it's room for improvement. But it's not as common as you seem to want to imply. Linux could even better... but the competition isn't all that impressive.

If you want Linux accepted in the mainstream, it needs to be *better* than Windows or OS X.

And I assert that, in actual practice, it is. My Linux systems have been easier to install, maintain, and debug than my Windows systems for several years now, along with being less expensive and dramatically more secure. I have my elderly parents on Ubuntu and they are just fine, and I don't have to clean a crappy Windows box every time I visit anymore. The only remark they had after the switch was that Linux had much nicer screensavers.

My kids have no problems with Linux. My wife doesn't like OpenOffice and wants MS Office back. Fine, we're testing Crossover Office now, we'll see.

...in Linux, my wireless card doesn't work *at all* without the "geek fix."

And that is a legal problem, not a technical one! It's the whole FCC regulation thing. It's not something that has to be (or even can be) fixed solely in Linux, when it's the legal and regulatory system that's screwed up. Even acknowledging that, I have three Wifi cards (1 laptop, 2 desktop) that work just fine in Linux.

Dell makes sure that wireless card works when the computer is shipped out.

And Dell could easily ship Linux computers with supported chipsets. There are plenty enough of them.

And no, for what it's worth I don't end up doing tech support for friends and relatives. My relatives all use Macintosh, and my friends are all good enough with computers that they don't ask me for help.

Ah, yes, I can see you're an expert on the 'mainstream'.

http://linux-wless.passys.nl/query_hostif.php?host if=PCI/ that's a link to all pci cards compatible with linux.

Ubuntu has the same problem as SUSE, it found my card [unlike FC] but refuses to use it...

Why hasn't anyone else linked to this chart which aims to be a complete list of wireless cards and what driver, if any, they're supported by under Linux?

It's incredibly useful.

Personally, I've had bad luck playing with the bcm43xx driver a few weeks ago, and I've loved the new version of the ipw2200 [finally the 1.0.[78] bugs are gone!] and my rt2x00 card is a nice backup.

Also, ndiswrapper works fine, provided you use 1.8 if you're on a 64-bit system. :)