“I needed to connect my new desktop PC wirelessly from my second floor office to my first floor network. As I started researching the options for wireless USB adapters, I realized I might have some work ahead of me. Wireless USB in Linux is still in the early stages of development. But a little searching and some trial and error led to a successful connection.” Read more here.
Wireless USB in Linux
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
I thought wireless USB was transparent (ie just USB) to the OS.
ndiswrapper will use windows drivers. much easier than recompiling kernels etc etc..
The problem is that the author of the article has it wrong.
What he wants is a USB wireless 802.11b or g card. The phrasing on the article header is misleading.
So, that is like a PCI wireless adapter, in that is it not often supported on FOSS or even Mac OSX. Support is great for PCMCIA or PCCARD wireless adapters.
USB is just the interface, like PCI or ATA. You still need to tell the OS how to communicate with the device (drivers).
My Zaurus SL6000 has a USB wifi adaptor built in (I believe it’s a prism chipset). If a comercial linux product with a 2.4.18 series kernel supports it, it cann’t be all that much of an early stage (and it works superbly BTW…)
why not just buy a wireless broadband router that is compatible, like I did. Just plug it into the ‘Lan’ jack (ethernet card jack) and you can use that without trouble. Saves you a lot of head-aches and does not cost a lot more…
i’ve been doing this for a while on my laptop with 2.4 series and a ma111. came in pretty handy. I set it to be a router if I use the lan jack. in other words, I can use the laptop as a wireless bridge. Since my PS2 is nowhere near my network, this can be handy.
-b
>>why not just buy a wireless broadband router that is compatible, like I did. Just plug it into the ‘Lan’ jack (ethernet card jack) and you can use that without trouble. Saves you a lot of head-aches and does not cost a lot more…
What happens if I have the router already (that must be the case for this person). I will by a router for each PC that I want to plug. Good luck with that. He wants to connect the to PCs Wireless. For this, at least one of the boxes must have a wireless device /PCMCIA/USB/PCI/ISA whatever.
Yes, support isn’t great in terms of ease of install or driver support.
However, with some research before choosing an adapter it can be quite easy.
Take those USB adapters running Atmel’s at76c503 for example (among others Netgear’s MA101 rev.B comes to mind). There are two projects which offer working modules (those from Berlios are more stable btw). And googling up sample bash scripts for the configuration of wep etc isn’t that hard.
Ndiswrapper isn’t the solution. it works only on x86. If you’re running on another architecture (like PPC), you’re shafted if you rely on ndiswrapper.
Personally, I’m a great fan of linux-wlan-ng and I’m currently looking for a wireless USB adapter to use with my Powerbook. The Linksys WUSB12 looks like a nice adapter, but it doesn’t seem to be sold in the UK
.
Wow just in time for me…
For the last week or two I’ve been trying to
install linux again but nowdays I have a much
better laptop than I used to and a different
wireless adapter… linksys wusb54gs )-;
google search and forum searches turn up ZERO
results unless I drop the ‘s’ (for the speedbooster
version).
Can’t get ndiswrapper working in knoppix.
I’ve also noticed there’s no .sys file w/ it’s
drivers, dono if thats a big problem or what.
If anyone knows how to get this working then
PLEASE email me ([email protected]).
I bought a Netgear MA111 from Amazon and it arrived last week. Version 2 of this product (the one currently shipping) does not work with linux! do not buy it. on that note, if anybody has version 1 and doesn’t need linux support, I’ll be happy to trade…
Hi
I tried a lot (wlan-ng, ndiswrapper 0.12, ndiswrappe 1.0rc3…) but was unable to make the Netgear wg111 working even though some homepages state it works with ndis. I you know a step-by-step howto: please post it here!
Install a supported operating system (like Windows XP Professional). It will work like a charm.
I heard that the driver included in ftp://ftp.linux-wlan.org/pub/linux-wlan-ng/linux-wlan-ng-0.2.1-pre… works like a charm.
As others have mentioned, ndiswrapper uses the windows driver. If you’re on x86, give it a shot and your card may work.
-b
What about installing a wireless bridge that sits between the microcomputer’s standard 10/100 ethernet port and the wireless access point or router? I know some folks who do that to connect their game consoles to their home WiFi LAN. Should cost about the same as a USB NIC, but require no special hacks to work, right?