Linux & Wireless

BeerCheeze · Posted: Wed, 28 May 2008 18:07:00 Post Subject: Linux & Wireless

Anyone have an easy way/guide to get a WiFi card working under Suse? Honestly have never done it Bang Head

Blue|Fusion · Posted: Wed, 28 May 2008 19:23:18 Post Subject:

Depends which card it is. Mine was somewhat difficult to get going, but that was when it was relatively new. Atleast Intel has a team developing good Linux drivers.

BeerCheeze · Posted: Wed, 28 May 2008 20:04:02 Post Subject:

Yea, talked to a few other people. Yet more proof that while it's good, Linux is still not ready for prime time. Sad

knight0334 · Posted: Wed, 28 May 2008 21:38:23 Post Subject:

thats why they make 10/100/1000 Base-T cards.. lol

**Modulok** · Posted: Wed, 28 May 2008 22:19:43 Post Subject:

http://wifi-radar.systemimager.org/
http://madwifi.org/

BeerCheeze · Posted: Thu, 29 May 2008 00:13:23 Post Subject:

Kilamon · Rated XXX Joined: 22 Mar 2005 Posts: 811

I had the wireless working under Ubuntu for a while and I found it to be unreliable, especially as I was using the box as a server. It was actually less reliable than my windows server on wireless. I pulled out an old 100baseT card and it worked fine, and it was even better after I got a gig card and switch.

One thing I do remember was that I had to use an ndiswrapper for the wireless and that, shortly after I had installed the wireless, there was a new tool released to make things easier, and that did work with some limited success.

knight0334 · Posted: Thu, 29 May 2008 11:44:27 Post Subject:

acruxksa · Posted: Thu, 29 May 2008 12:52:04 Post Subject:

Wireless is definitely one of the items on the "Needs Improvement" list for Linux, but it is truly dependent on the card/chipset your wireless adapter uses. Atheros chipsets are pretty common and the madwifi drivers seem to do a reasonable job getting them to work. Intels chips also seem to have reasonable support. Many companies do nothing to help linux developers with their hardware so most of the problem is not with Linux or it's developers, it with the manufacturers. Many drivers have to be painstakingly constructed by reverse engineering the product. This takes a lot of time and commitment.

I agree that Linux could be a lot better, but when it comes to drivers the blame lies with the manufacturers, not the linux driver developers.

**Modulok** · Posted: Thu, 29 May 2008 13:59:10 Post Subject:

you could always use the easy way...
http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/joomla/

You just need to point to Windows drivers.