need a wireless card that works out-of-box on linux
P!-Ro
Posts: 1,189
I recently bought a 802.11n usb wireless card off of geeks since it stated it would work on linux, but after two days of trying everything and getting nothing but errors I've decided to give up on it. I liked it because it was fast and was only $20, so if I were to get something different I'd want it to be around the same price range. Anyone know of a good usb card I can buy from a trustworthy source? I don't intend to guess again with geeks since they have a 15% cut for returned goods, and no free return shipping... (another reason to love Parallax)
Comments
Usually Linux has listing websites that provide what they can support and how well. If you want to save money, try salvage from a good Linux platform. My dead EEEpc has a good wifi card in it. Whatever that is would be a good choice as it has proven Linux support.
http://users.linpro.no/janl/hardware/wifi.html
The above link is a start, but try Google for "Linux Wifi". If you are using a particular distrobution, say Ubuntu, use that as a key word in your search. Also, the wifi router projects in Linux have data on which manufacturers support Linux.
BTW, I suspect that using a USB entry for Wifi just slows it down more.
In your case, the USB Wifi unit may work, but you don't fully know how to install. Again, it is about finding Linux support. Does your area have a Linux User Group with regular meetings? At times meeting someone face to face can get faster results that surfing the web.
http://www.linux.com/archive/feed/41834
If you are using Linux, just 'out of the box' installation is unusual. You ordinarily have to tweak a few settings. M$ and Windows provides that kind of service in order to keep customers.
At some point, if you are going to rely on Linux, it does take learning a few things in more depth than M$ requires. You might try your local library for a copy of a good text, such as "How Linux Works - What every Superuser should know" by Brian Ward.
There are other books, but none of them will provide up-to-date USB Wifi installation. That is on the internet and takes searching for. Since I use Ubuntu, I generally start with them for support and then branch out.
You haven't given us any idea which Linux you are using or exactly what the USB Wifi hardware is, so there isn't much we can do to provide specifics.
-Phil
Fedora generally uses RPM for installation, while Ubuntu uses Synaptic. And Fedora 2.xxx is quite old.
There is a huge division between the Fedora/Red Hat side of installation software and the Debian side of installation software. (One might call this the two sides of Linux)
Save yourself $20 or more and learn to install software in Linux. Computers as a hobby are about learning and this is a good opportunity. I suspect that buying another device is going to hit the same wall in installation, unless you are absolutely sure it is supported in your distro.
Searching Google for 'Linux Wifi USB 802.11n" leads to good info. The info might even be more helpful if you use your particular distribution in the search.
http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/ <<< Try this for instance.
To get it right, one must know the specific Wifi chip number as manufacturers often redesign chips for improvements and these require a new driver. And of course, you need to decide on which distro you are using - Mint and Ubuntu are both Debian derivatives, so installation would be similar - if not the same.
the PCMCIA wireless ornioco are not super easy to find but they are IMHO the best in class for Out of the box Liunx wireless support .
I have yet to find a Distro that did not work on it ..
Loopy Is right there is the RPM guys the DEB guys and there is the Oh lets do a make on a tarball guys .
last I checked (last year) , WiFi Via USB in Linux was horrible supported ...
I My self own a few WiFi to Ethernet adapters for bridgeing ..
As long as the computer has a RJ-45 hole I can get on WiFi .
"If you want hardware to work with Linux, you have to start with what they say they can support - not just buy the hardware first"
Yup . the First thing I do is look online of the device I want to see if it will work .
BTW I am not a power user In Linux .
After you find a manufacture that does cooperate with Linux, then there is the problem of whether the specific wifi chip is good or trash. You can't just rely on brand to get a good Wifi interface as they get hot and heavy into competitive development - something often gets rushed into production and is a disappointment.
Then there are simple Linux installation problems. Does your software require RPM or Synaptic or none of them? Is it fresh enough to work with up-to-date Linux (kernel 2.6.....)? Are you using your Superuser status for the installation (In Ubuntu, and maybe Mint, you might have to us 'sudo' to get the software to work)?
And the bottomline is...
Can you afford to wait for the Linux community to provide support if it doesn't exist, but the hardware is good?
I LOVE Linux as it is a open, friendly, and helpful community. It is a great place to learn how computers really work and to do so for free. But the greedy side of the computer world is always messing with it. Some vendors will simply claim something works on Linux to clear their shelves. M$ offers features that are often not well-developed and users snub Linux because they can't have them (like leading edge games and 3-D movies).
And yet, Linux is running most of the servers that are the backbone of the internet, can do things faster, can keep older hardware working for many years longer and at faster rates than Windows, never forces you to buy utilities to clean up messes that should have free clean up (like that Registry clean up nonsense).
Keep trying to make this work. It will be a blessing in disguise. But also be aware that USB to Wifi is not the optimal. The LAN plug is a better suited port for a dongle.
http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/ndiswrapper/index.php?title=Main_Page
-dan
While Fedora has RPM and Ubuntu and Mint have Synaptic files, there is indeed that third option of just providing the code in C and leaving it up to you to work through compilation as well as installation.
So, take a good look at the error messages you are getting and what they are saying. Are they compiler and library errors? Often you have to update all the appropriate libraries to get a good compilation. But in some cases, the code is so.... old, that the opposite is true. You either have to roll back to when the code was written or update the code.
The zip I attached may be more current that what you have - but I still have no idea if it is for EXACTLY the right device.
How do you get a good compiler configuration?
I suggest you read "Linux Kernel in a Nutshell" by Greg Kroah-Hartman for guidance as has a very good explanation of the compiler process. (You don't need to recompile the Kernel for this, but a new Kernel always requires a clean compilation - thus the resource is extremely helpful.) This book is FREE on line.
Loopy: I'll try the zip tomorrow if I can. Not sure how much time I have though, my friend wants me to hang out with him at the fair tomorrow before the demolition derby
Now for a rant. I really like Linux, but there are a few areas where it is maddening. Hardware such as video cards, Wifi, web cams, and Microcontroller IDE's have been the bane of my Linux experience.
With all of these devices vendors use commodity chip sets for their product internals. Some chip sets are well supported on Linux, while others are not. It really depends if the chip set manufacture releases open source drivers or not. The Linux kernel often includes drivers for popular chip sets, and you get out of the box compatibility. Source for the less popular ones is available and instructions are usually available to compile and install them.
In theory with the internet you can find out which chip sets are used with which products and only buy those products that will work with Linux.
But all this goes wrong because manufactures often change product numbers or chip sets without warning. So finding a device that an online forums said works can be a trial and error process (pounds head on keyboard).
Sometimes you can get closed source drivers for a product (I got one for a SiS mother board and an NVidia card), but they can withdraw support at any time. The Linux kernel often does not maintain driver binary compatibility between major releases and eventually these drivers fail to load. Ask me how I know (pounds head on keyboard again).
This is slightly maddening because Microsoft's market research claims that Linux actually has more desktop market penetration than the Mac!
That said I keep enough Windows machines around the house for those things that don't work with Linux, and use Linux where I want to use open source programming tools.
Yesterday I decided to install Ubuntu Netbook Remix on my MSI Wind u100 to play around with it. After the install the wireless card would not work. I did some research and found these computers often use the Ralink 2860 chipset which has spotty support from its manufacture and the driver was busted when using WPA2.
I searched the Ubuntu forum and found a suggestion to install a patched driver. No luck as it wouldn't work after the reboot. The other suggestion was to use the NDIS wrapper and use the Windows driver.
Now I happen to have the Windows driver because the Ralink rt2860 is a pain on Windows as well, and I had to install a few patched versions before I got one that would work with WPA2.
So I went to the package manager and installed ndiswrapper.
I started Windows driver management GUI and loaded the windows driver.
In a terminal I did a "sudo vi /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf" and added "blacklist rt2860sta" to then end.
I rebooted and wireless was working. It was so easy that I no longer fear Linux wireless issues.