As someone who has used Linux for years now, I have to ask: WILL THEY EVER FIX THESE?!

I recently installed the latest stable Debian (Etch) on my mother's old Dell Dimension. She uses a Linksys WUSB11 version 2.6 to connect to the internet; her ethernet card no longer works. I have tried bloody everything I can to get this little bugger working. I have tried the old atmel driver and the new at76_usb driver. I have tried using NDISWrapper with the vendor's Windoze driver.

Since the machine has no network connection, I have had to compile everything from source. The two atmel drivers don't even compile. I can perhaps get Mom to post the error messages. ndiswrapper compiles, but upon loading the Windoze driver it causes a kernel oops.

The installation is Debian Etch straight off the installation CD with no updates thanks to the lack of network connection. Can anyone help?