How Can Choosing a Wireless Card Be This Hard
 

All right, at the risk of being flamed back into the cave I crawled out of recently...

I want a wireless 802.11b pci card for a desktop I'm building (nothing fancy). I want it to play nice with Linux (RedHat 9.0, Mandrake (various), and Knoppix).

What is the best card?

I can't seem to find a good list of "yes this works, this doesn't" and when I do, it's virtually all pcmcia cards. I'd like to just pick one up on Amazon but am wary since it appears that the assumption of "Linksys cards just work" is wrong in the case of the newest card (V4). Any good suggestions on determining the "Linux Likes" factor on wireless cards that are new, and you don't have in your hand?

Any pointers appreciated, as always.

G

"How Can Choosing a Wireless Card Be This Hard"

Uh... it's linux. It's supposed to be hard. Easy is for Windows wimps.

:D
;)

I'm in the same boat. I had a D-Link DWL-500, which I couldn't make work.
It turns out that between revs, D-Link changed chip sets, and some (the TI ones)
simply have no linux support whatsoever. After asking around in the
Networking > Wireless Networking forum on this site, I found that the NetGear MA311
ALWAYS works under linux, and all revs of the card use the same
Prism II/Orinoco chipset. A week ago I went to amazon and bought one,
and after asking more questions to this site, got it up and running on
my desktop system. The NetGear MA311 is a PCI, not a PCMCIA.

Here is the pointer someone here gave me:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/hcl/index.php
Go to the Network Cards part. Under NetGear, I have no idea
why there are two different listings for the MA311.

Good luck.

Bah! You state the obvious... or is it so obvious. I would argue that Linux, depending on the users needs, ain't THAT hard. It's getting easier each year. We all had to learn windows at some point in our lives, we easily forget that. Remember learning you had to click the "Start" button to stop windows (now that's just plain silly)

That's a great pointer. Thanks for chiming in. I'm gonna give it a try.

Btw, this box will be an HTPC. I will be building it as a dual boot so I can get it up and running quickly with MS for a high WAF (Wife Approval Factor) rating. Then, once she's hooked on time shift and net browsing on the TV, I can start booting into Linux. Then, and only then, can I cleanse myself.

-G-