Jean Tourrilhes On Linux Wireless LAN

mcleodnine writes "Jean Tourrilhes of the Linux Wireless LAN Howto project took some time to answer a few questions from members at LinuxQuestions.org. Among some of the more interesting commments was his pick of best and worst Open Source friendly vendors ('Some of those TI engineers even sent me e-mails criticising some features of the Wireless Extensions'), an opinion or two about the Next Big Thing in wireless (MIMO), and a poke in the eye for OS zealots of any religion."

Comments

wireless viop

[earlytime]

what i want to knwo is when can we turn these hotspots into voip transmission towers for wireless viop phones?

Re:wireless viop

[agent]

There is a Mesh AP project that has VoIP support.
More info here.

http://www.locustworld.com/

-Steve

OS Zealotry

[Tezkah]

"I actually believe that OS zealotry is doing a disservice to our community, because if you force somebody into something against his will, you run the risk of creating negative experiences. And, ultimately, what matters is not the OS you use, but what you give to the world, you are not interviewing me because I use Linux ;-)"

Finally, I'm sick of the whole "FreeBSD is dying!" "Microsoft kills babies!" "Linux is stoled code!" "Haiku is actually a freeform poem!" stuff. Just use whatever you want... ok?

Re:OS Zealotry

[rastakid]

Just use whatever you want... ok?

Agreed, as long as it is OpenBSD.

Re:OS Zealotry

[bfg9000]

Just use whatever you want... ok?

Agreed, as long as it is OpenBSD.

..on PPC.

Who says the French are arrogant?

[dannyelfman]

From the article:

It's hard to describe those comics to non-french speakers, because the french-speaking comic culture is vastly more diverse, mainstream and serious than in other languages (either manga or US comics), and this precise type of comic has no equivalent.

I don't think so. Nope, not one bit.

Re:Who says the French are arrogant?

[Anonymous Coward]

He's not being arrogant.

He's simply pointing out that like 100% of Manga consists of drawings of blue-haired, pumpkin-headed screamers with eyes the size of dinner plates, with very little variation.

Sorry he insulted your porn, btw.

Cheers,
Bowie

Re:Who says the French are arrogant?

[DrEldarion]

You forgot the tentacles and schoolgirl uniforms.

Re:Who says the French are arrogant?

[BJH]

But not more than in Japanese culture, which neither you nor Mr. Tourrilhes seem to be particularly familiar with.

Re:Who says the French are arrogant?

[SebNukem]

No, he is not. French "comics" are a significant part of french litterature and art. They are not limited stories about super heroes with super powers against super vilains. The fact that you have no idea about what Jean is talking about doesn't make him arrogant.

Re:Who says the French are arrogant?

[Tonytheloony]

He also said french-speaking... not french. Many of those comics actually come from belgium.

On zealotry

[mattgreen]

Seems to me that the most fervent zealots of a particular OS are simply just narrow-minded or don't know much beyond their own little world. You see countless developers (y'know, people who do things) decrying zealots, while the zealots themselves just kinda sit there, making everyone else look bad with their banter, and don't really contribute anything other than fanboyism.

Kill em all I say.

Re:On zealotry

[happyfrogcow]

OS zealotry is just (hopefully) a stage in the growth of a user. it's when they realize the OS is great for their use, they imagine how many other great uses it could have for them, and then think everyone must use this because it is so great for me. hopefully they realize eventually that other people use things that are great for themselves, and changing would be detrimental to what they want to accomplish. Eventually the zealot will come to terms with diversity and no longer be a zealot. the problem is there will always be zealots, but the people who are zealots may change.

there was once a long list comedically stepping through the progression of a linux user from newbie to guru. i tried finding it, but failed. i must be using the wrong keywords. google has failed me, and I have failed it.

Re:On zealotry

[Anonymous Coward]

Zealotry isn't confined to Linux users. Macintosh users can still hold their own and yes dear there is such a thing as a Windows zealot. The Windows zealots are pretty entertaining. They claim to be oppressed on Slashdot then look for pro-Linux comments to mod down. Pathetic really. The especially tasty ones think that use of Windows confirms all that is of capitalism, America, Mom, and Apple Pie....well maybe not the APPLE pie. Those same people will also speak vaguely of the "best tool for job" as though they were objective or something. I'm pretty sure some astroturfer started this whole thing of calling anybody who doesn't use Windows a zealot. Methinks, some of the hardcore MS users have something to feel defensive about.

I think I know where excessive zeal about a choice like this comes from. Everyone here wants to be thought of as intelligent and discerning. The choice of OS/editor/IDE/browser/whatever confirms and announces these qualities to others. When someone criticizes his choice or praises another, his intelligence is being insulted. Not only is the user of something else stupid, he is boorish and ignorant as well.

The Windows zealot has something else to offend him as well. The Windows market is saturated. Anything else that grows in mind or marketshare is an economic threat to him if his job or business relies on Windows' marketability. I think a lot of the commie trolls against FOSS come from this economic defensiveness.

Re:On zealotry

[DeadInSpace]

there was once a long list comedically stepping through the progression of a linux user from newbie to guru.

Evolution Of A Linux User. A fun read, if you take it with a grain of salt :)

Better Business Bureau vs Texas Instruments

[Anonymous Coward]

Our company was considering going with Ti's TX100 802.11b chipset about a year ago, to build our product around. Then we did our homework.

Seems a bunch of people signed onto a petition to get Ti to release the specs for their TX100 chipset, so they could develop the drivers Ti was refusing to release. When Ti ignored it, they called the BBB on their ass, citing false advertisement (they claim the chipset is supported in Linux)...And they STILL ignored it.

With that being said, put your money where your mouth is. Buh-bye Ti, Helloooooo, Intersil. :)

Re:Better Business Bureau vs Texas Instruments

[bbowers]

Seems thats somewhat the case with Realtek. They had a huge showing with the RTL8139 series chip released to the Open Source Community, however their chip RTL8180L for wireless is falling through the floor. It's a part binary part source module, that wont run on a kernel greater than 2.4.21, and uses the private extentions(iwpriv) instear of the regular ones (iwconfig). Numerous e-mails have been sent from the lq.org community and no response at all. Theres a large thread about this, and when I say large, I mean large.... 816 replies, and 100947 views large... Seems as if Realtek doesn't want to release the source... if they did... they might make big bucks with it. Thats ok, not our loss.
I got my card working with slackware... though I think I am gonna ditch it, works like crap anyways..

Re:Better Business Bureau vs Texas Instruments

[curator_thew]

The TI ACX100 802.11b+ chipset is my favourite example when non-technical people claim that reverse engineering is impossible, because the project has shown that it is indeed possible:

http://acx100.sourceforge.net/ -- for Linux

http://wlan.kewl.org/ -- for FreeBSD

But had I known before I made the purchase, I would have bought another manufacturers product - unfortunately I was stuck between a hard place: 802.11b itself (11mbps) too slow, 802.11b+ (22mbps & 44mbps under TI "x4" mode) just right, 802.11g (54mbps & 108mbps) perfect, but was too expensive, and it also has drive problems (ath binary driver).

If manufacturers are reading this: let me tell you that in the future, I now do my research properly, and I won't buy your product if you are not open source friendly.

Best wireless card for linux?

[DAldredge]

What is the best, least expensive wireless USB NIC for linux?

Re:Best wireless card for linux?

[rossy.co.uk]

Take a look at the LQ HCL: http://www.linuxquestions.org/hcl/index.php

Insightful questions

[mratitude]

LQ) what's the hostname of your most favored linux box and why is it named that?

Ok, mod this as troll bait if necessary and I know that email interviews can home in on minutae, but if this guy is a person of interest, aren't there better questions to ask? Was there no moderator screening the questions?

Get a wireless bridge and be [g,d]one!

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless your time is not of the essence!

Now if only Linksys/Netgear/D-Link could (and I don't see why they can't) make an affordable wireless bridge+hub/gateway that costs in the same ballpark as a wireless router. (A Netgear bridge costs almost 2x as much a wireless router/gateway)

And while at it, they shoult also put out some clear specs so the CompUsa/BB salespeople know the difference between a bridge and an access point.

Expert wireless Recommendations please?

[dbc001]

I've been using Linux for a while now, and have been interested in moving to wireless for quite some time. I'm hesitant though because of all the problems that can come with cutting edge hardware in Linux. It would really help if a few Linux users who have tried a lot of wireless gear could make some hardware recommendations for the rest of us.

What are some no-headache brands of wireless gear for Linux? What brands should be avoided? Are some distros better for wireless than others?
(I realize that some of this may be in the linked article, but the article appears to contain a complete list that requires a lot of time and effort to sort through).

thanks in advance,
dbc

Re:Expert wireless Recommendations please?

[molarmass192]

My base station is a Linksys WRT54G. It's cheap and damned good ... and it runs a Linux kernel so it's kinda hackable if that's your thing. My PCMCIA wlan card (I only do wireless from my laptop so I can't speak on PCI cards) is a Microsoft MN-520 (I think it's been discontinued). Regardless, it's a very solid card and it works well with the Linux wlan project driver. The negative experiences I've lived through/heard of are a) newer Linksys PCMCIA cards (they keep changing the chipsets) and b) Microsoft base stations, not the client cards, mainly connection stability problems.

Re:Expert wireless Recommendations please?

[debian4life]

I feel your pain. The problem you will run into is that even if you get a D-Link, Linksys, or Netgear, some of them may use the same chipset. I tried the D-Link first because it was cheap. It used the Prism2 chipset. But after reading every bit of documentation, and trying it as both a module and in the kernel under about 10 configuations I gave up. It seems like getting these cards to work is hit or miss for a lot of people based on all the posts I read. And believe me I read a bunch.

Then I tried a Linksys that I use on my work XP laptop. No dice there. I forget the chipset on that one, but I had the Linksys WPC11 v4 which apparently has little or no support on Linux.

So finally I decided to just bite the bullet and get a Cisco Aironet 350. If you buy these new, they are over $100. But if you go to Ebay, you can get one for around $50. All you do is compile the support in the kernel and it works like a champ. I have set it up successfully on both Debian and Gentoo.

So Cisco is the easy way to go if you can get a good deal. I would avoid the Linksys card I tried, but apparently versions prior to v4 work better. You can give the D-Link or Netgear a shot with the Prism2 chipset, but you may have to work at it a while to get it working.

Hope that helps.

Re:Expert wireless Recommendations please?

[Jeffrey Baker]

Well, the answer is don't get cutting-edge hardware. You can get excellent, servicable wireless 802.11b hardware from several years ago, and that is the golden era for open drivers. Something like a Cisco Aironet 352 is perfect, with excellent drivers and support from all layers of the operating system (linux, bsd, win32, macos, ...). Not surprisingly this is also the interviewee's recommended hardware.

As far as headaches, I think you'll find more headaches in the peripheral support infrastructure than in the wireless hardware and drivers. If you are going to use PCMCIA/PC Card wireless adapters I think you'll discover the Linux PCMCIA drivers have a habit of panicking. With any hardware you'll need to do a lot of manual configuration hacking before your computer will perform useful functions like automatically roaming to available SSIDs (something windows and mac os do automatically). You'll be installing packages and editing /etc files for the next month, but eventually you'll have something that works 62% of the time.

Re:Expert wireless Recommendations please?

[Greyfox]

Mmm. I've got an Orinoco card in my Dell 640C Laptop and that works fine. Oddly enough, EVERYTHING on that laptop works fine. Too bad running Wine pushes the temperature up and up until the laptop performs an emergency temperature shutdown in a last desperate act of self preservation. But I digress...

The Netgear 104mbps card I have in my desktop uses the Atheros chipset, for which a free driver exists (I forget if I had to patch my kernel or not.) The 52mbps one used some other chipset which I believe is supported by a commercial driver. Cisco's got good gear and have been great about supporting open source OSes in the past, but their gear is kinda hard to find down at the local Best Buy.

Don't bother trying to use ad-hoc with any of this, by the way. Shell out the $50 for a wireless router and use it to link up your assorted wireless devices. I had had-hoc working for about 15 minutes before it crapped out, then it refused to ever work again. Since I got the router, everything works fine.

I don't trust WEP or whatever the hell the latest "security" standard is, so everything in my house does encrypted PPP tunneling over wireless, and my desktop handles routing out to the Internet.

Re:Expert wireless Recommendations please?

[bobbozzo]

My DLink PrismII card works, but only after installing the WLAN-NG drivers/tools, which are NOT included in many linux distributions, even Fedora Core 2.

I now have a Cisco Aironet 350 from work, and it works with the driver built-in to the kernel.

If I had to buy another card, I'd still get a PrismII or Prism54 because of price.

Re:Expert wireless Recommendations please?

[fishbowl]

"You can get excellent, servicable wireless 802.11b hardware from several years ago"

No you can't. Not in the sense that you can spec it on a purchase order, or go to your local retailer and pick it off the shelf. And not in the sense that you can effectively mail order it either.

Even if you know brand and model number, most cards have various chipsets. I know I covet my D-Link DWL-520 cards. These are PCI 802.11 cards. the current card under the same model number is Broadcom. The old ones are Prism2. Guess which ones are in the stores today?

Likewise, I have lots of Linksys products, including 3 PC Cards, one of which is Prism2 and the others are garbage. They have exactly the same packaging and model number, so how would I buy another one? I also have Linksys USB devices, some are Prism2, some are not. Again, how will I buy another one if brand and model number won't pick it?

>Something like a Cisco Aironet 352 is perfect

Expensive too, but I guess that can't be an argument.

Oh Please, BSD is dying

[toupsie]

Agreed, as long as it is OpenBSD.

haven't you heard? BSD is dying!!! I know, I read it on Slashdot.

In General

[SolidiusRock]

I find it interesting that Linux has "issues" with wireless technology (or any technology for that matter), but yet Linux has all the more interesting tools for wireless whereas other OSes seem to be lacking in them.

Re:In General

[Jeffrey Baker]

Sorry, that's absolutely false. Even if you could reprogram the radio to use frequencies way out of the ISM band, your antenna would be massively detuned for such frequencies. People forget that these network cards still have transistors and filters at the end of the signal chain, and there's no register you can program that will change the center frequency of a bandpass filter. The meme of the evil hax0r interfering with cuddly bunny radio traffic was started by wireless hardware manufacturers groping for some excuse to not support Linux. It has no basis in physical reality.

Re:In General

[Jeffrey Baker]

Look, I know the manufacturers claim the FCC is lording over them, and I know Alan Cox has said the manufacturers have said this, and I fully believe that the manufacturers told Alan that story. But there's no getting around the physics of the situation. Every one of these 802.11b and 802.11a wireless networking cards that I've pried the case from includes a hardware bandpass filter. This is true even for the manufacturers who refused (at first) to repease drivers or specs.

I don't care if you can program the Frob Industries Mk. III wireless radio to broadcast on the KA satellite bands. It's going to be driving a 2.4GHz bandpass filter and a seriously detuned antenna, meaning its emissions will amount to jack shit.

Now, having said all that, there was a chipset, the Atheros "madwifi" chipset, which allowed its power level (in-band) to be increased in excess of the level allowed by any regulator agency on this planet, and also allowed its center frequence to be set out of the ISM band. Naughty. The combination of power level and frequence control allows you to radiate serious power near the ISM band. In my view this is a defective piece of hardware which the FCC should simply have banned. Radios without hardware filters and slew rate control should not be approved.

But, this situation does not apply to all the other manufacturers for which this FCC story is generally pitched (which is to say, any manufacturer who doesn't support Linux). Note this was initially an argument for why Intel couldn't support Linux with their Centrino radio, but lo and behold eventually they did support it. Did Congress pass a law? Was an official bribed? Did they rev the hardware? No, none of these things. The real answer is the story was fiction to begin with. Don't spread it and don't allow manufacturers to hide behind it.

Solution to zealotry

[Shadow Wrought]

Once everyone finally accepts that the only true operating system is AmigaOS we can all move on and forget our petty differences;-)

Now, where was I on this A1200...

Vendor Zealotry or Ignorance?

[Eberlin]

About a year and a half ago, I bought me one of those linksys wireless cards for an older (400MHz PC) running RH7.3 or something like that. For the fun of it, I decided I'd ask the salesfolk at Best Buy whether it was compatible with Linux. The answer I got was that it would be difficult to find drivers for it, and that to save me the grief, he recommended I get a LAN-Bridge instead.

I ignored the advice and bought the card anyway. (Of course I had done some research beforehand...enough to know it possibly worked, anyway) I got it running with the wlan-ng drivers.

Later on when I had more money, I decided to get me a laptop. Again, did my homework to see what would and wouldn't work. Again, a trip to best buy encountered a tech/sales guy -- whom I asked the question "will it run Linux?" After spouting off a few acronyms of certifications he has, he proceeds to tell me that Bill Gates has bought Linux and that we won't even be talking about it a year from now (he's got about 2 months left of that year...better act fast!) Then if I wanted to run a linux server on a laptop (no I don't want to run a server...just a desktop -- 'um, same thing') -- that it would be really slow. The only hope I have of running it comfortably would be on an Alienware system.

"So why don't you want to run XP?" "It's got a large system requirement, it has serious security issues, and overall I can't say I like it." "Have you looked into using XP Pro?" "Um, I already don't want to pay for the OS, you're recommending I pay MORE instead?" "Well, XP Pro isn't going to cost you that much more..." "Thank you for your time. I think I'm going to go home and rethink my strategy."

Went home thinking "jackass" and proceeded to get a Dell...which I'm using to write this post...now on a machine running Mandrake 10CE...with all the functionality I need.

Zealotry or ignorance? I'm not sure. To this day I smile whenever I go into a Best Buy -- thinking I should pick up a piece of hardware and ask whether it works with Linux just for the stories they may give me.

Re:Vendor Zealotry or Ignorance?

[clymere]

Once upon a time, I worked in Best Buy.

First of all, I will assert that it's an evil, evil store. Second of all I'll agree that this guy is a complete jackass. But you have to realize something too: 99% of the people who come in that store don't run anything other than windows, and for the most part have never heard of Linux. Furthermore, those of us who DO run Linux know a lot more than any electronics salesman, and do our homework ahead of time(which you did).

Honestly, i think if hes claiming to have certifications hes full of shit. Noone with any certs would have any reason to work there. When I was hired, I made $6.75 an hour and I was the highest paid non-manager in the most profitable part of the store(computers/home office). Even a crapy cert would earn me more than that.

I had a similar experience when looking for wireless cards to go with my new(used) laptop. When I asked salesmen things like "does this work under Linux?" or "does it have a PrismII chipset?" they all smiled and politely conceded that i sounded like i knew a hell of a lot more then them, and if I had any questions about anythign else to let them know(which i did, and they were helpful).

Don't get me wrong, after working there I hate the place. But i think you just happened to find one real jackass. Most of the people I know working there are just highschool/college students trying to make a little spending money. Noone there is trying to be a computer guru(except for the guy who helped you of course :)

What we all *really* want to know:

[Outland Traveller]

I read the article. I've browsed the FAQ and HOWTO and other assorted documentation many times in the past.

The one question most people want to know is what manufacturer/models are compatible, where to buy them, and what drivers to use. When you go to your retail store of choice they often will not list what chipsets they use in their wireless cards. Knowing which chipsets are compatible isn't that helpful if you can't match it definitively with a product.

I ended up going the safe route and ordering some aeronets because I didn't want to play roulette, and I couldn't find a new orinocco-based card for sale anywhere quickly.

Has someone out there discovered this business opportunity and created a web store specifically geared to linux-friendly hardware? Buy their card,download some linked drivers, and you're good to go. That would be easy. Last time I looked the regular linux suppliers let me down.

IPSec

[augustz]

He mentions (rightly I think) that it would be nice to have worked out ipsec better rather than drive it's basic functionality down to the link layer of all the different things that would need security.

Why hasn't IPSec taken off more (or some other similar setup)? I don't know enough to know what the tough bits might be.

WLAN limited?

[mahdi13]

With 802.11, you'd better check the map before traveling to see if it's worth bringing your laptop.

I wouldn't say that anymore, a couple weeks ago I went to South Dakota to see family and decided to scan for WLANs through town...In less then a mile on one residental street I found a dozen APs, 4 of which had WEP enabled.

If you don't have problems 'stealing' other peoples bandwidth, there is an open AP on almost every residental street corner.

I can get to 4 open networks from my house in Aurora!
People are buying WAP enabled routers for their DSL/Cable modems and I'd say about 70% (if not more) run with the defaults, maybe changing the admin password...maybe.

The problem is people are not educated on wireless security, and why bother? They refuse to believe that someone is going to hijack their network and release a virus, break into another network or some other criminal task...it's like AIDS, it won't happen to ME.

Re:WLAN limited?

[dozer]

If you drive down my street, you'll find a number of open access points, including mine. Please come on by and use them. That's what they're there for.

You know, you can get your own cable modem for $25/mo and hack into all the systems you possibly can from the comfort of your own couch. Anonyminity is easy enough. If you really do want to hide behind a wireless AP, you're going to drive to the local universtiy and get many mbit/sec. I highly doubt you're going to park outside my house and use my tiny stream.

But if you do, I'll be watching you. I look forward to learning new tricks. Come on by!

OS Zealotry

[bfg9000]

OS zealotry is doing a disservice to our community, because if you force somebody into something against his will, you run the risk of creating negative experiences.

The problem is not so much that it *forces* anybody to use a system like Linux (because it's pretty much impossible for an opinion to be that powerful in the face of economic and political reality), but that it serves to blind people to the potential pitfalls that await, thus leading them to make a wrong decision for their situation. NO system is perfect (even Linux and *gasp*! Mac OS X). ALL have pitfalls depending on what you're using your computer for. In many cases, Windows *is* the best choice, although improvements in KDE and Gnome are making Windows a less obvious choice. And of course, arguing in favour of a system (or a methodology like open-source) is perfectly acceptable, as long as both sides are rational and can concede that the other side has positive attributes as well. Thus, both sides learn from the other and take what they've learned to improve themselves. Thus, honest evaluation leads to progress and growth, which is one of the fundamental tenets of capitalism, the free market, and all that... Of course, the ability to meet halfway is now called "appeasement" and is labeled as a "liberal" trait, which is apparently synonymous with "evil" or "corrupt". Zealotry exists in politics of all types, and is a great temptation, since it's so easy to believe that the world is black and white, good vs. evil, and that there is nothing to learn from the other side and that their arguments are all irrational and unfounded. Zealotry is a glass ceiling on self-improvement.

Zealotry in any form is inherently dishonest because zealots consciously or unconsciously hide the faults of their beloved systems while simultaneously proclaiming their greatness. This does lead to bad experiences (and I'm talking from experience!).

The UPSIDE of being a Linux zealot as opposed to a Windows or Mac zealot is that because the system is very open, any roadblocks you may encounter are likely soon to be fixed, or are fixable if you know a programmer who accepts payment in beer and pizza (which is all of them). I've hit roadblocks in Mac OS X that have no solution, and none seems to be coming... and [zealotry on] Windows itself *IS* a roadblock! [zeatotry off]

Anyone Remember Diamond

[stecoop]

All this talk about closed hardware and non-vendor support reminds me of Diamond Video cards from 1997. Diamond was a video card company based on S3 chips and wouldn't give details on the hardware; therefore, to setup a Linux machine you had to guess at the settings or use someone else's trial and error data. Now does anyone today know whom Diamond manufacturing is? Very people know unless you happened to own one of those cards that were good on windows machine.

Thus to the point, I wonder if there is a Mathematical Function that can be plotted about a company's success, not quite directly related to Linux support but some hardware layer support, owing to its success?

Future of wireless networking

[PureFiction]

As hinted at in this interview, the future of wireless networking revolves around many variations on a few core themes: diversity, versatility, and scalability.

Diversity is accomplished through MIMO and other technologies like beam steering to provide a robust communication channel between wireless devices.

Versatility comes with open source firmware / drivers and software defined radios. There is no way manufacturers can foretell all of the desirable uses and functionality consumers want in their products. The most useful systems will be those that are versatile and can adapt to new protocols, encodings, etc.

Scalability can be achieved through robust ad-hoc routing protocols and decentralized security methods to produce a system that scales easily as participating nodes join and part the network without complicated provisioning or a reliance on centralized and limited backhaul or access point functionality.

There is still a lot of interesting work to be done in these areas, but the real fun starts in the applications that will utilize these new ad-hoc networking infrastructures.

KNOPPIX wireless experience

[gosand]

I was recently traveling for work, and I had my laptop with me (WinXP). The hotel let you use PCMCIA cards for free to access their wireless connection. ($75 refundable deposit) I don't even know what card it was, but I installed the driver on my machine. Windows complained because it was an "unauthorized" device, but I installed it anyway. It worked great.

Then I wondered..... and pulled out my Knoppix 3.2 CD. Note that this isn't even the latest and greatest version. It booted up. I started Mozilla, and was on the net in no time flat. It recognized the card and loaded the driver with no interaction on my part.

Now every time I boot the machine, WinXP complains that the wireless card isn't inserted. *sigh*

This was my very first experience with wireless, and it was pretty painless. Take a Knoppix CD to your local Best Buy, Circuit City, or whatever and try out the cards for compatability.