Re: Newbie question -Wireless Cards
- From: Sam <sam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 01 Dec 2007 13:31:22 -0600
computeruser writes:
I am a newbie who hasn't settled on a distro just yet. I am exploring Fedora 8, Mandriva 2008 KDE and Knopix 2004 -live cds (so far). I was able to get my HP 110 printer to work fine with Fedora.
I haven't been able to get on the internet on my laptop via any of these Linux distros.
The card is a Linksys Wireless-G Notebook Adaptor 2.4 GHz (802.11g) [Model No:WPC54G ver 1.2] .
If it matters the laptop is a HP Pavilion series (ze4540us).
Where can I find tips on installing drivers for devices?
You don't. There's no such thing as "installing drivers" in Linux. All wireless drivers are included in the Linux kernel. Either your wireless hardware is supported by the Linux kernel, or it is not (because the manufacturer refuses to release technical specification to Linux kernel developers, in order for the driver to be written).
Linux does not have the concept of "installing" various device "drivers", like you have on Windows. All device drivers are included in the Linux kernel, and support for new hardware devices is introduced in a newer Linux kernel revision. For example, when I was shopping for a Bluetooth USB adapter, I was looking at a cheap Targus USB stick on sale at Comp-USA, and a brief Google search showed that support for the Targus USB stick was added in kernel 2.6.23, which I happened to have just upgraded to. That's how I knew that I won't have any problems with it (and I didn't, I just plugged it in, and had Bluetooth come up right away).
I should say that there are several dubious hacks floating around, that you may hear others talk about occasional. There's the famous ndiswrapper, for example. It's a wrapper that, in some but not all cases, allows one to take a Windows device driver and hack it into working on Linux. It does not work with all device drivers, just some, and when it does it's often not reliable, and rather unstable.
Occasionally you'll also meet some well-intentioned, but hopelessly misguided, hardware manufacturer that claims to have a Linux driver for their hardware that you can install. Often you'll find that their custom installation instructions (because, as I said, there's really no such thing as generic device driver installation in Linux) are very difficult to follow by people that don't have technical background, and are one typo away from nuking your entire Linux system, and making it unbootable; or, they provide binary-only blobs that only work with five-year old Linux kernels from either Red Hat or SUSE, and will brick your current Linux distribution into an unbootable state.
The bottom line is that unless you have no problems with spending the rest of your life screwing around with ndiswrapper, or similar hacks, trying to get them working, the best and the most painless way to get your wireless hardware to work with Linux is to make sure it is supported by Linux, before you buy it. This goes not just for wireless hardware, but for all other kinds of hardware. If none of the Linux distros sees your wireless hardware, it's not supported. The End. Go and bitch to your hardware's manufacturer, and demand that they release technical specs for their hardware so that a Linux driver can be written for it.
Finally, you could've found the answer to your question yourself, with a simple Google search for "linksys wpc54g linux". The very first hit says, clearly enough:
"it turns out that the linksys WPC54G card has the broadcom chipset. sad enough broadcom will not support linux for some reason."
Go and bitch to Broadcom. If you can, return your laptop, and get one with an Intel Centrino wireless chipset, which is very well supported by Linux.
Attachment:
pgpk0W3g5aT4I.pgp
Description: PGP signature
- Follow-Ups:
- Re: Newbie question -Wireless Cards
- From: Vladimir Florinski
- Re: Newbie question -Wireless Cards
- From: Baho Utot
- Re: Newbie question -Wireless Cards
- References:
- Newbie question -Wireless Cards
- From: computeruser
- Newbie question -Wireless Cards
- Prev by Date: Re: Newbie question -Wireless Cards
- Next by Date: Re: Suggestion for Nautilus Improvement
- Previous by thread: Re: Newbie question -Wireless Cards
- Next by thread: Re: Newbie question -Wireless Cards
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
