Please suggest a fedora core 4 compatible wireless card

Temlakos temlakos at gmail.com
Sat Nov 26 00:08:50 UTC 2005


Neil Cherry wrote:
> Temlakos wrote:
> 
>> Douglas Phillipson wrote:
>>
>>> What wireless cards work with FC4 out of the box?  I'd rather not 
>>> have to install any drivers.  Please use common names, not chipsets 
>>> in responses unless you provide both.
> 
> 
>> That said, I recommend the Netgear family of wireless cards, together 
>> with the kernel-module-madwifi package appropriate to whatever kernel 
>> you wish to run. These kernel modules are available on the livna 
>> repository, and they work. I use them myself.
>>
>> Netgear uses chipsets built by Atheros Communications. I recommend 
>> that you go to the site http://www.atheros.com/ and run their 
>> excellent Product Search routine. You will find that Netgear is hardly 
>> the only wireless card maker to use Atheros chips--and you can even 
>> select specific models of cards, addressing whatever band you want to 
>> be on (802.11 a, b, and/or g). The list of companies, and card models, 
>> that should work with the kernel-module-madwifi packages is far too 
>> voluminous to post here--which goes to show that that chip has gotten 
>> very popular indeed.
> 
> 
> I think he meant that he didn't want to d/l something, compile and
> install it. Rather he wanted something that is already in Fedora.
> I'm not that's going to be possible (I'm not that knowledgeable in
> this area). What I have done is to use ndiswrapper (a pain but
> workable) and I just got a Netgear WG311T and hope to not have to
> use the ndiswrapper as I'm writing a book and I'd like to have the
> correct info for the ndiswrapper (I have 2 boards for that) and the
> info for a native driver (MadWiFi?).
> 
> Here's a link to boards that work with MadWiFi:
> 
> http://madwifi.org/wiki/Compatibility
> 
> I'm not sure this will fit your needs exactly but I hope it helps.
> 
> BTW, before you curse the Linux community under your breath the
> blame for the WiFi problems should fall on the manufacturers of
> the chip sets as they are the ones who are not sharing. I've
> fought with the NDIS, the closed source drivers and even
> incompatible cards (an Intel 2200 won't work in an AMD
> machine, the BIOS won't let you boot).
> 

Well, actually, I was suggesting that he install the 
kernel-module-madwifi package via yum or smart or apt-rpm, by 
configuring one of those package managers to use the Livna repository. I 
certainly didn't mean to suggest building from source! Just make sure 
that the kernel version number for the kernel and kernel-module-madwifi 
packages match (and also that you're using the correct architecture), 
and you're good to go.

And I agree with you: the fault for the chronic WiFi problems lies with 
manufacturers who won't cooperate with the open-source movement. And 
cooperation makes good business sense! (Were that not so, then giants 
like HP and Epson would never have cooperated, and we would not have 
available to us the excellent printer and scanner drivers for HP and 
Epson machines that we have today.) As computer users become 
increasingly fed up with Microsoft's upgrade policies--not to mention 
their constant security holes and bugs--manufacturers will face a stark 
choice: cooperate or lose market share.

(But speaking of bugs--if the Open Office group will just solve their 
repeated random crashes...!)

Temlakos




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