[gentoo-user] Which wireless cardbus?

[gentoo-user] Which wireless cardbus?

[Mick]

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This must be one of the more often repeated Qs on many forums.  I am trying to 
find out which WiFi cardbus to buy for my laptop.  I didn't have much joy 
with a Belkin and would like to get a card which has a chipset that is 
supported well in Linux.

Which chipsets have the more mature drivers?  Is there a list somewhere which 
is kept up to date - a lot of what I found in Google is of historical 
importance only.

Your insight on this would be much appreciated.  :)
-- 
Regards,
Mick

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Re: [gentoo-user] Which wireless cardbus?

[Ali Polatel]

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* Mick (michaelkintzios@gmail.com) wrote:
> This must be one of the more often repeated Qs on many forums.  I am trying to 
> find out which WiFi cardbus to buy for my laptop.  I didn't have much joy 
> with a Belkin and would like to get a card which has a chipset that is 
> supported well in Linux.
> 
> Which chipsets have the more mature drivers?  Is there a list somewhere which 
> is kept up to date - a lot of what I found in Google is of historical 
> importance only.

 Atheros is the best supported chipset -- through madwifi-ng drivers -- afaik,
I have a D-Link card with an atheros chipset and I never had any problems.
 Here is a nice site with a list of supported cards:
 http://linux-wless.passys.nl/
 dunno if it's uptodate though

> Your insight on this would be much appreciated.  :)



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Re: [gentoo-user] Which wireless cardbus?

[Stroller]

On 18 Feb 2007, at 23:19, Mick wrote:
> ... I am trying to
> find out which WiFi cardbus to buy for my laptop.  I didn't have  
> much joy
> with a Belkin and would like to get a card which has a chipset that is
> supported well in Linux.
>
> Which chipsets have the more mature drivers?

You don't state which model of Belkin you tried, but I can assure you  
that they do a "set" (USB, cardbus, PCI) of 802.11g cards that are  
excellently supported by the rt2500 drivers. These are excellent, are  
OSS & you can get them with `emerge rt2500`.

I've also used cards which use the prism54 & madwifi drivers, which  
both do "master mode" (for building a wireless access point or base- 
station under Linux) and are both excellent. Jean Tourrilhes' page at  
HP.com is quite up-to-date on the situation with the prism54 drivers,  
I think, and I've never seen a cardbus card using this chipset,  
anyway, but if you can get hold of a card that's well supported by  
prism54 then it's very easy to use and the driver is in the main  
kernel tree.

The Atheros chipset supported by madwifi is capable of doing 802.11a  
as well as b & g - not all cards do "a", but they're not too  
difficult to find. madwifi-ng is a little non-standard in the way you  
configure the card (so I guess it might not work so well with  
graphical wireless configuration utilities) but it offers some more  
advanced features (VAPs, or "virtual access-points" in master-mode,  
for instance, allow you to have WEP & unencrypted interfaces on the  
same card; hence with iptables you can set different firewall rules  
for ath0 & ath1).

<http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com/wiki/index.php?title=Hardware>
<http://madwifi.org/wiki/Compatibility>
<http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/ 
Linux.Wireless.drivers.802.11ag.html#Prism54>

I recommend this card, but if you're outside the UK contact in  
advance regarding shipping:
<http://networkned.co.uk/Belkin_Cardbus.php>
FULL DISCLOSURE: I am involved with this supplier.

Stroller.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Which wireless cardbus?

[Mick]

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On Monday 19 February 2007 11:43, Stroller wrote:
> On 18 Feb 2007, at 23:19, Mick wrote:
> > ... I am trying to
> > find out which WiFi cardbus to buy for my laptop.  I didn't have
> > much joy
> > with a Belkin and would like to get a card which has a chipset that is
> > supported well in Linux.
> >
> > Which chipsets have the more mature drivers?
>
> You don't state which model of Belkin you tried, but I can assure you
> that they do a "set" (USB, cardbus, PCI) of 802.11g cards that are
> excellently supported by the rt2500 drivers. These are excellent, are
> OSS & you can get them with `emerge rt2500`.

Well, I didn't want to bore you - I think I may have already posted about my 
troubles with it in the past.  It is a Belkin USB WiFi adaptor, Model No. 
K7SF5D7050A, which seems to have a RaLink chipset.  I have had some success 
running it with the rt2x00-9999 drivers from CVS and USE="rt2500usb" (the 
stable rt2500 crashed my system every time).  However, after Christmas the 
rt2x00 driver has not worked and keeps giving me kernel panics every time I 
plug it in the USB port, e.g.:

http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=18890#18890

I suspect it may have something to do with the 2.6.19 kernel.  All different 
CVS builds that I have tried crashed.  Tried to install pre-Christmas builds 
from the archives, also crashed.  Hence I'm fed up being without WiFi for so 
long and thought of using an Amazon voucher I have handy to get myself a nice 
cardbus; but this time I would like to make sure that I have something which 
definitely works with Linux.

However, if you have any ideas to make my Belkin USB work again then I'll use 
that voucher for something else.  :)

Thank you all for your helpful advice and links.

> I recommend this card, but if you're outside the UK contact in
> advance regarding shipping:
> <http://networkned.co.uk/Belkin_Cardbus.php>
> FULL DISCLOSURE: I am involved with this supplier.

Having been burned once I would rather go for something which has matured 
enough to be in the kernel, if possible, but thank you for the suggestion all 
the same.

-- 
Regards,
Mick

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Re: [gentoo-user] Which wireless cardbus?

[Stroller]

On 19 Feb 2007, at 23:15, Mick wrote:
>> ...
>> You don't state which model of Belkin you tried, but I can assure you
>> that they do a "set" (USB, cardbus, PCI) of 802.11g cards that are
>> excellently supported by the rt2500 drivers. These are excellent, are
>> OSS & you can get them with `emerge rt2500`.
>
> Well, I didn't want to bore you - I think I may have already posted  
> about my
> troubles with it in the past.  It is a Belkin USB WiFi adaptor,  
> Model No.
> K7SF5D7050A, which seems to have a RaLink chipset ...
>
> However, if you have any ideas to make my Belkin USB work again  
> then I'll use
> that voucher for something else.  :)

I can't comment on that, although it doesn't particularly surprise  
me. I know the drivers for the USB RaLink chipsets are less mature  
than those for the PCI & Cardbus cards - when I first started using  
those (100% success on the Belkin cards under Gentoo, very easy to  
get going) work on the BSD USB drivers was only just beginning.

>> I recommend this card, but if you're outside the UK contact in
>> advance regarding shipping:
>> <http://networkned.co.uk/Belkin_Cardbus.php>
>> FULL DISCLOSURE: I am involved with this supplier.
>
> Having been burned once I would rather go for something which has  
> matured
> enough to be in the kernel, if possible, but thank you for the  
> suggestion all
> the same.

I don't think you're going to be terribly lucky with that. I'm only  
familiar with the 3 drivers I mentioned - and I know there's an OSS  
driver available for an Intel chipset, too - but of those 3 only the  
prism54 was in the main kernel last time I checked, and cards with  
that chipset that are getting quite hard to get hold of. I have never  
seen a  prism54 cardbus card.

I appreciate your concerns, but honestly a rt2500 cardbus (or PCI)  
card is a safe bet - these drivers are very mature. I'm guessing that  
driver design for USB devices is more complicated &/or widely less  
well-understood than for devices using the "more traditional" PCI or  
cardbus busses (in fact, I think PCI & cardbus are substantially the  
same from the computer's point-of-view). I'd be very surprised if you  
were to plug on of these cards into your machine and `emerge rt2500  
&& modprobe rt2500 & iwconfig` failed to show it.

Stroller.

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RE: [gentoo-user] Which wireless cardbus?

[Nelson, David (ED, PAR&D)]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Stroller [mailto:stroller@stellar.eclipse.co.uk]
> Sent: 20 February 2007 14:22
> To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org
> Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Which wireless cardbus?
> 
> 
> [Stuff]

I've had good luck with RALink based cards (I have a PCMCIA Asus WL107g if I remember the model correctly - early (~2005ish) drivers were utterly horrendous but later ones were far far better). I currently have an Intel IPW3945 if I have the model right - which is an onboard chipset built into the laptop so not sure if it's around in PC card form as well. It was easy enough set up with WPA and so forth.

Hope this perhaps helps the OP and/or others.

--
djn

I do not represent anyone else in emails I send to this list.

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