wireles

[Frank S.]

Sorry to bother you I know  i should ask this questions in a forum but i have try with no
result so:
I need to get a wireless wifi PC card for my laptop and a pci wifi card for my desktop, I
do NOT want to use Ndiswrap or anything similar to that I would to get one that works out
of the box, PLEASE could you recommend me one 
Thank you very much

 
---------------------------------
Access over 1 million songs - Yahoo! Music Unlimited.

[Gianluca Sforna]

On 11/11/06, Frank S. <franklinux392(a)yahoo.com&gt; wrote:
>  I need to get a wireless wifi PC card for my laptop and a pci wifi
> card for
>  my desktop, I do NOT want to use Ndiswrap or anything similar to that I
>  would to get one that works out of the box, PLEASE could you recommend me
>  one 

"Wireless" and "OOTB" does not go very well together: at the very
least, you need to install some firmware from livna (like for centrino
based laptops), but you often end up installing also a kernel module.

For my desktop PC I have an atheros based card which works quite well,
apart some minor quirks, in WPA mode with the livna madwifi driver.

I also used to work with a US Robotics PCMCIA wifi card, based on a TI
chipset working with the acx100 driver, but it is in a drawer for
quite some time now, so I can not comment on its current state of
support.

[Arjan van de Ven]

On Fri, 2006-11-10 at 22:01 -0800, Frank S. wrote:
>  Sorry to bother you I know  i should ask this questions in a forum
> but
>  i have try with no result so:
>  I need to get a wireless wifi PC card for my laptop and a pci wifi
>  card for my desktop, I do NOT want to use Ndiswrap or anything similar
>  to that I would to get one that works out of the box, PLEASE could you
>  recommend me one 
>  Thank you very much 

the Intel 2100/2200 cards have in-kernel drivers (supported by Intel)
but you need to get some firmware (hopefully that can go into Fedora
proper soon, the license terms are matching with the Fedora requirements
afaiks)

The Intel 3945 cards have an out of tree driver (supported by Intel) and
firmware, and at this point need a binary userspace daemon (but that
will go away in the next months). When that happens the driver can go
into the kernel (together with devicescape or once devicescape gets
merged)

The Broadcom cards have an in-tree, reverse engineered driver but
firmware is a bit of a mess; most work apparently (but it's unlikely
that that will be shipped in fedora, it's more of a "take the windows
driver and copy a part of it" than a "vendor allows us to")

There is madwifi which is always going to be a nightmare (binary kernel
component that is hard to ship by anyone due to it's strange gpl/non-gpl
mix); result is continuous pain of outside, binary driver but little
chance of that changing

There's a whole bunch of others which are smaller in the market, most of
them have GPL drivers but aren't merged yet, several are waiting for
devicescape to get merged first.

So it's not all that bad, as long as you're willing to check before, and
look around for drivers a bit. The good news is that you hardly need
ndiswrapper anymore, and even can avoid binary drivers since most cards
have SOME open driver now.

[Jos Vos]

On Sat, Nov 11, 2006 at 10:03:24AM +0100, Arjan van de Ven wrote:

>  the Intel 2100/2200 cards have in-kernel drivers (supported by
> Intel)
>  but you need to get some firmware (hopefully that can go into Fedora
>  proper soon, the license terms are matching with the Fedora requirements
>  afaiks) 
Are (external) 2200-based PC Cards sold by Intel and/or OEM'ers?

I know them only as built-in/mini-PC cards on Centrino-based laptops
(they work fine, also using stock RHEL4 with firmware added) and, given
the rest of your answer, they seem to be the best choice when looking
for a stable, well-supported 54 Mbps card.

-- 
--    Jos Vos <jos(a)xos.nl&gt;
--    X/OS Experts in Open Systems BV   |   Phone: [phone]
--    Amsterdam, The Netherlands        |     Fax: [phone]

[Arjan van de Ven]

On Sat, 2006-11-11 at 11:31 +0100, Jos Vos wrote:
>  On Sat, Nov 11, 2006 at 10:03:24AM +0100, Arjan van de Ven wrote:
>  
>  > the Intel 2100/2200 cards have in-kernel drivers (supported by Intel)
>  > but you need to get some firmware (hopefully that can go into Fedora
>  > proper soon, the license terms are matching with the Fedora requirements
>  > afaiks)
>  
>  Are (external) 2200-based PC Cards sold by Intel and/or OEM'ers? 
For 2200 I don't know; they might be. For 3945 I know you can get a
version that is using the PCI Express variant van cardbus/pcmcia... de
nieuwere laptops hebben daar een slot voor (mijn t43 heeft dat al en
die's zowat een jaar oud)

[Arjan van de Ven]

On Sat, 2006-11-11 at 12:02 +0100, Arjan van de Ven wrote:
>  On Sat, 2006-11-11 at 11:31 +0100, Jos Vos wrote:
>  > On Sat, Nov 11, 2006 at 10:03:24AM +0100, Arjan van de Ven wrote:
> >   
>  > > the Intel 2100/2200 cards have in-kernel drivers
> (supported by Intel)
>  > > but you need to get some firmware (hopefully that can go into Fedora
>  > > proper soon, the license terms are matching with the Fedora requirements
>  > > afaiks)
> >   
>  > Are (external) 2200-based PC Cards sold by Intel and/or
> OEM'ers?
>  
>  For 2200 I don't know; they might be. For 3945 I know you can get a
>  version that is using the PCI Express variant van cardbus/pcmcia... de
>  nieuwere laptops hebben daar een slot voor (mijn t43 heeft dat al en
>  die's zowat een jaar oud) 
eh if I start in English I should finish in English

For 2200 I don't know; they might be. For 3945 I know you can get a
version that is using the PCI Express variant of cardbus/pcmcia... (mini
pci express or something). The newer laptops have a slot for that; my
t43 has one and it's about a year old already.

>

[Jos Vos]

On Sat, Nov 11, 2006 at 12:02:37PM +0100, Arjan van de Ven wrote:

>  For 2200 I don't know; they might be. For 3945 I know you can get
> a
>  version that is using the PCI Express variant van cardbus/pcmcia... de
>  nieuwere laptops hebben daar een slot voor (mijn t43 heeft dat al en
>  die's zowat een jaar oud) 
You switched to Dutch in the middle of the answer... :-).
Which I can understand, but some others might not... :-).

Anyway, I need a solution for a non-laptop computer that has a
built-in PC Card slot type II.

-- 
--    Jos Vos <jos(a)xos.nl&gt;
--    X/OS Experts in Open Systems BV   |   Phone: [phone]
--    Amsterdam, The Netherlands        |     Fax: [phone]

[Ralf Ertzinger]

Hi.

"Frank S." <franklinux392(a)yahoo.com&gt; wrote:

>  Sorry to bother you I know  i should ask this questions in a forum
> but
>  i have try with no result so: I need to get a wireless wifi PC card for
>  my laptop and a pci wifi card for my desktop, I do NOT want to use
>  Ndiswrap or anything similar to that I would to get one that works out
>  of the box, PLEASE could you recommend me one Thank you very much 
If you can live with it (and if you can find it, which will be quite
more complicated): something based on the old hermes/orinoco chipsets.
Which will only do 11b (11MBit), but work without funny firmwares.

-- 
Michael Jordan makes more money from Nike annually than all of the Nike
factory workers in Malaysia combined.

[Kevin Kofler]

Frank S. <franklinux392 <at> yahoo.com> writes:
>  Sorry to bother you I know  i should ask this questions in a forum
> but i have  
try with no result so:I need to get a wireless wifi PC card for my
laptop and a 
pci wifi card for my desktop, I do NOT want to use Ndiswrap or anything similar 
to that I would to get one that works out of the box, PLEASE could you 
recommend me one Thank you very much

Unfortunately, as others have already said, there isn't really something which 
works out of the box except for older 802.11b-only chipsets. There are 
currently 4 categories of drivers I can think of:
1. driver (GPL) in the kernel, but needs a separate firmware download (under a 
restrictive license). Examples: ipw2100, ipw2200, bcm43xx.
2. GPL driver, no firmware download required, but not merged yet. Examples: 
rt2400, rt2500, rt2570, rtl8180. See the rest of my e-mail for details.
3. GPL driver, not merged yet, requires separate firmware. Examples: rt61, 
rt73.
4. Instead of or in addition to the firmware, the driver has some other 
proprietary portions. Examples: ipw3945 (binary regulatory daemon), madwifi 
(for Atheros cards, uses a binary hardware abstraction layer).

One solution if you don't want binary firmware is Ralink rt2500-based cards 
(there's a USB version called rt2570, the PCI and PC Card versions are called 
rt2500). These have a GPL driver and don't need binary firmware (presumably, 
they have some firmware on a ROM on the chip, but you don't have to deal with 
licenses or separate downloads). The downside is that the driver is 
out-of-tree, so it has to be built separately. However, the newer rt2x00 driver 
which also supports these chipsets is under review for Extras. I don't know 
when or if it will be approved though. The nice thing about rt2500/2570 is that 
these support 54 Mbps 802.11g, unlike old chipsets like Orinoco, the drawback 
is that the drivers are still not in the kernel (they want to get rt2x00 
working because the original driver is essentially a port of Ralink's Window$ 
driver which isn't ideal for Linux, and rt2x00 1. is not finished and 2. is 
waiting for the DeviceScape 802.11 stack to go into the kernel first, this 
problem has already been mentioned).

Be warned though that the newer rt61 (PCI/PC-Card) and rt73 (USB) chips do need 
a firmware binary downloadable from the Ralink site, with no license text 
attached at all (so you can only guess at what the terms are, no 
redistribution, I assume), at least that was the situation last I checked.

As another 802.11g option, Realtek 8180 chips also work without firmware 
downloads and with a GPL-ed driver, but that hasn't been merged into the kernel 
either. I don't know what the status of that driver is.

        Kevin Kofler