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802.11 for Linux Non-Geeks?

Posted by Cliff on from the room-for-improvement dept.

smanuel asks: "I'm in the process of helping my non-geek friend get his Linux box set up with a PCI wireless card. 2006 is fast approaching and Linux *still* has spotty support for 802.11a/b/g PCI and PCMCIA cards. Ask the The Oracle about wireless for Linux and the results aren't much better. There are a ton of cards to choose from but support is either spotty or requires such contortions that I'm wary of spending the time. What PCI/PCMCIA cards do fellow Slashdot readers recommend? I'm looking for both PCI and PCMCIA cards; preferably ones with native support in Linux (I'm trying to avoid ndis{c,w}rapper if I can). Is the fact that card manufacturers change chipsets more often than they underpants make this a never ending problem?"

3 of 86 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Actually by dan_bethe · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Yeah no kidding. Has anyone who's complaining about suboptimal hardware support on a free OS, ever tried designing (in other words, reverse engineering) a device driver or abstraction layer for an OS? Get to the freaking point and just ask which cards are best supported, assuming you can't read the docs yourselves.

    How do they think a developer of free wifi would feel if they were reading this public display of bleating and humiliation? Such a developer would by definition have spent years of their lives devoting tons of free time to a labor of love and of liberty. If it was me, I'd be pretty insulted if not humiliated. Hopefully they'd have thick skin and say "yeah I know I don't like it either" or even just "whatever; you're welcome to fix it" but they're under no obligation to sympathize any further. Free device driver developers, especially those in wifi, are some hard working, state-of-the-art people who are substantially increasing our liberties. If you're not part of their solution, you're part of the problem.

  2. You may need to consider what distro you're using. by mellon · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'm using Ubuntu Breezy with an Intel 802.11g card, and it works just fine - it worked out of the box with no tuning on my part. AFAIK most old 802.11b cards Just Work - the problem comes when you go to 802.11g; there you want to avoid Broadcomm, since drivers for Broadcomm chipsets on Linux are spotty. I don't know why the Intel is better, but for whatever reason, it is (I'm sure there is a reason - I just don't follow those drivers very closely).

    You may run into trouble when you are in a situation where there's more than one network. NetworkManager should take care of that, but it's bleeding edge right now. You can select networks from the command line, and there are widgets for selecting the network in Kde and Gtk which do seem to work, but the UI isn't very easy to use yet. NM should be easier; stay tuned.

  3. Whatever you do... by Metasquares · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Don't buy a card with a broadcom chipset.