802.11 for Linux Non-Geeks?

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?"

Comments

Actually

[Punboy]

Its not that Linux doesn't support the cards, its that the card vendors don't support linux. If they were smart they'd supply linux drivers, or follow a standard that allows current drivers to work with their cards.

me too!!

[lubricated]

This is the my biggest beef with linux support for wireless. I haven't found an 802.11g chipset that works reliably. I would purchase one this instant(I'm not kidding, I'll go straight to newegg or bestbuy) if I knew it worked, perfectly. All the cards have their quirks and the support is almost a joke. After twisting yourself into contortions it might work. That said the only card that I've had consistent success with has been the centrino chipset. Too bad these only come on intel laptops and not as a pci/pcmcia card.

I have a pheobe usb wireless that mostly works(atmel chipset). It only supports 802.11b(hardware limitation) and it can't do a scan for networks while connected to one, this really fucks up wifi-radar.

I had an orinico pcmcia card by smc. Very nice card, unfortunately it had a very flimsy plastic antena that broke when my cat stepped on it. Scanning did not work at all, so if I wanted to connect to a network, I had to guess the essid.

I also had a linksys pcmcia card. I forgot the name but it was one of those where earlier versions worked fine but the newest version had a different chipset even though the model name remained the same. This was a piece of shit card under any os. Though it mostly didn't work under linux.

RTL8180 now has native support

[aCapitalist]

The RTL8180 is a pretty infamous card that now has native support after years of Realtek jerking us around with drivers that worked on 2.4.24 kernel or below. Of course the old orinico and prism chipsets work well, but 802.11g native support seems to be lacking a lot more than b. There's a chipset called RALINK or something or another that is open sourced.

The big problem is that the card makers will change chipsets at the drop of a hat and it can be next to impossible to find out what chipset its actually using - even if you know the revision and everything. I remember one card where there was the same version, but some were made in taiwan and some were made in china and only the chinese cards had the proper chipset.

It's a real mess. I probably spent 3 hours one night doing research and had my choices narrowed down when I happened to pop in a kanotix live cd and lo and behold it picked up my card without ndiswrapper or anything. So I'm happy for now, even though its just a 802.11b card. And then of course you've got the whole frequency regulation crap where manufacturers can't even open source if they want to.

Re:VMWare?

[Trinn]

If you are being serious, CoLinux is a far better answer for running linux under windows than vmware. It runs at near-native speed, using essentially a port of UserMode Linux to Win32 (it runs as an NT service)