wifi question

[jweekley1]

I have noticed from reading that people seem to have alot of trouble with wireless. Is it just wireless in general or some specific hardware causing the conflict. I am thinking about using the dlink usb devices.


Any information would be appreciated

[spencerf]

It is mainly hardware specific. Some wireless cards have native linux drivers either already in the kernel or can be patched into the kernel this makes using wireless pretty straightfoward. Many others do not. This is where ndiswrapper and mad-wifi come in handy. These use windows drivers to make your wireless work on linux.

I would google your specific wireless device and see if anyone has had any experience with it under linux. if you find native drivers then you should be clear. If not then ndiswrapper probably can take care of it and any questions once you figure out a direction you should go in are always welcome.

so short answer wireless is something a lot of people have problems with mainly, imho, because it is the first thing new linux users want up and running and there are many different manufacturers and methods for getting it to work. But the good news is that there is a whole wealth of information availabe out there on it.