The Best Linux WiFi Card?

[kzip]

Does anyone know a good brand WiFi card that just works straight out the box with no ndis/madwifi/prism etc driver fiddling?

I've got a Netgear WG511 but every time I install Fedora I end up chasing around trying to get the prism54 stuff working which is a real pain. (right now I've just reinstalled FC4 and just can't get the damn thing to work, did before but took me a few hours).

My wired Xircom just fires up first time, so I'd like a WiFi card that does the same

[dickinsd]

I have lots of fun with a fresh install on my prism based card.

The same goes for a Dlink TI based card.

I also have an Orinoco based card - that works straight away with Ubuntu, Fedora and Mandriva.

Currently sat in a Windows machine though

If you look on eBay, you can find some pretty cheap ones as well.

Dave

[kzip]

Thanks for the quick reply - I'll check out the Orinoco cards.

Cheers!

[sej7278]

It used to be the Agere Orinoco Gold 802.11b

Opensource support has gotten crappy with 54g or these pseudo-108-125Mbps accelerated devices, so you have to use the closed Windows driver and ndiswrapper.

My DLink DWL-650 (not 650+) worked fine with RH9+FC3, but it was the initial revision with the kinda T-shaped antenna, not the rev-H with the square one. Think it was Prism2 chipset.

[Omega Blue]

It's now Proxim Classic Gold.

I have no problems with native Linux drivers so far, so that's probably something you want to try first.

[mib4]

D-link is tricky. If you are using d-link 520 802.11b it should be release B. For an example release E doesn't work under fedora =) Different chipset

[chili555]

Is your WG511 a Taiwan or a China? If Taiwan, the prism54 goes like a dream. Here is what I did:

The essential elements, hotplug, pcmcia, wireless-tools should just be there if you installed Fedora on your laptop.

I downloaded the firmware: http://www.sonnik.com/downloads/WG511DCB.zip .

I unzipped it and renamed it isl3890. I moved it, on a USB pendrive from my desktop to my laptop. I then moved it to /lib/firmware.

unzip WG511DCB.zip
inflating: WG511DCB.arm

mv WG511DCB.arm isl3890
cp isl3890 /lib/firmware

I then plugged in the card. As root, I then did:
/sbin/ifconfig eth1 up
(The green LED on the card came on and stayed on. Sweet!)
/sbin/iwconfig eth1 mode Managed
/sbin/iwlist eth1 scanning
eth1 Scan completed
Cell 01 – Address: 00:99:88:AA:BBC <==the mac address of my router
ESSID: “GBR1” <==the SSID of my router
and a whole buncha other stuff

Great! The card works and is aware of traffic coming from the outside world!

Created a file with vi (you could use gedit, emacs, or nano) called /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1. It says:

DEVICE=eth1
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
ONBOOT=no
MODE=Managed
USERCTL=yes
KEY=123yourkeyhere456 <==If you use a WEP key

Save and quit.

Then, as root, do /sbin/ifup eth1

BOOM! Got an IP address, surfing the web. Sweet again.

Good luck and have fun!

[Jeff Sadowski]

I love Atheros based cards the madwifi driver rules. It allows you to be a AP(Access Point) even. How awsome is that.
Anyways most if not all ABG cards have Atheros chipsets in them and allot of laptops that have built in wireless I gather have Atheros chipsets. I just bought a Dlink DWL-AG660 and it works pretty good. I had a cisco ABG card previously with the Atheros chipset and had to give it back but I like the chipset so much I had to immediatly go buy a card.

5210 supports 11a only
5211 supports both 11a and 11b
5212 supports 11a, 11b, and 11g

is what the madwifi driver supported so I went looking for one of those chipsets online particularly the 5212.
11a wouldn't be too usefull considering most places have b/g access points. But having the ability to connect to a/b or g
is wonderful. And being able to act as an access point is fun.
So I found a few cards with the 5212 chipset in them
I know you said you want one to work out of the box but I just love the madwifi drivers. I'd rather patition for fedora to start including more drivers with it. Particularly fedora should come with ndiswrapper as an easy to install option.
ndiswrapper by itself is all gnu. Also the madwifi driver ought to be included with Fedora its still beta but works quite well.