Fedora 13 / Realtek wireless

[Jen_2005]

Hi,
I am having problems with with a Satellite Pro L500 and FC13. The laptop has a Realtek RTL8192SE wireless adapter, which runs under Win 7 that it came with, but refuses to show itself under FC13. When I run lshw it shows me:
************************************************** *************
product: RTL8192SE Wireless LAN Controller [10EC:8172]
vendor: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. [10EC]
bus info: pci 0000:14:00.0
version: 10
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities:
Power Management,
Message Signalled Interrupts,
PCI Express,
bus mastering,
PCI capabilities listing
configuration:
latency: 0
resources:
ioport: 4000(size=256)
memory: f2200000-f2203fff
this device hasn't been claimed
***********************************************
I looked on the web and this forum for clues and someone suggested installing kmod-ndiswrapper. So I installed the yum rpm-fusion repository and an ndiswrapper for my kernel ------ and nothing's changed. Blehhhh!

When I do an lsmod I get:

************************************************

Module Size Used by
tcp_lp 1695 0
fuse 46663 2
rfcomm 53043 4
sco 13192 2
bridge 37420 0
stp 1367 1 bridge
llc 3545 2 bridge,stp
bnep 11757 2
l2cap 38237 16 rfcomm,bnep
autofs4 18943 3
sunrpc 159624 1
cpufreq_ondemand 6732 2
acpi_cpufreq 6453 1
ip6t_REJECT 3298 2
nf_conntrack_ipv6 13996 2
ip6table_filter 2191 1
ip6_tables 9219 1 ip6table_filter
ipv6 216192 34 ip6t_REJECT,nf_conntrack_ipv6
uinput 5210 0
btusb 12104 2
snd_hda_codec_intelhdmi 13723 1
bluetooth 72139 9 rfcomm,sco,bnep,l2cap,btusb
snd_hda_codec_realtek 200739 1
snd_hda_intel 20319 2
snd_hda_codec 61515 3 snd_hda_codec_intelhdmi,snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_ hda_intel
snd_hwdep 4704 1 snd_hda_codec
snd_seq 41363 0
uvcvideo 46837 0
snd_seq_device 4867 1 snd_seq
snd_pcm 59284 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec
microcode 10013 0
videodev 29534 1 uvcvideo
v4l1_compat 11106 2 uvcvideo,videodev
toshiba_bluetooth 1559 0
snd_timer 15063 2 snd_seq,snd_pcm
i2c_i801 8286 0
snd 45127 13 snd_hda_codec_intelhdmi,snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_ hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_hwdep,snd_seq,snd_seq_ device,snd_pcm,snd_timer
r8169 28261 0
joydev 7291 0
iTCO_wdt 8712 0
soundcore 4842 1 snd
iTCO_vendor_support 1963 1 iTCO_wdt
rfkill 12905 2 bluetooth
mii 3422 1 r8169
snd_page_alloc 5877 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm
i915 232127 3
drm_kms_helper 21663 1 i915
drm 133489 3 i915,drm_kms_helper
i2c_algo_bit 3929 1 i915
i2c_core 19731 6 videodev,i2c_i801,i915,drm_kms_helper,drm,i2c_algo _bit
video 17109 1 i915
output 1541 1 video
***********************************************

I've been a Fedora Core bunny since FC3 but I've only recently discovered the wonders of wireless networking and this one has me stumped. Could some nice guru out there please point me in the right direction? I don't fancy being reduced to Windoze when I work from home!

[reed9]

Ndiswrapper is a wrapper around the Windows XP (or earlier) driver.

Directions on using the program here.

There is a linux driver for the card, but it can reportedly be pretty flaky. Some people have little to no trouble with it, some have a lot. (Presumably, it's poor quality is why it isn't included in the kernel.) You would have to build this driver module yourself. Directions are here. This is for Fedora 12, but should be the same. (The name of the file may be different, since I think there is a more recent version released since that was posted.)

[Jen_2005]

Thanks reed9. I fiddled around with it for a while but did not get anywhere fast so I looked at live versions of other distributions and found Ubuntu 10 picks up the Realtek wireless straight away and gives me a rock solid connection. So I installed Kubuntu 10 and can now happily work from my patio at home when I feel like it
We still run Fedora at work and I don't intend to change that anytime soon but I just needed a quick solution.
Regards,
Jen