# What wireless cards WORK in linux?

## Kragen

God wireless support is crap in linux! I've been through 2 wireless cards and couldnt get either of them to work. One of them worked for a week and then packed in, and now ive just spent 4 hours fucking about with a card that has the bloody linux logo on the front of the packaging for christs sake!

Appologies, im just a little pissed off right now.

Can anyone suggest a cheap wireless usb card that will work reliably in linux?

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## orionrobots

Apparently anything with a prism chipset is fine. I use (in my computer, and my wifes machine) cheap Belkin internal PCI Wifi (g) cards - they are fine in Linux, although being desktops I do sometimes get reception issues - but thats a hardware problem, not software.

You could see if using ndiswrapper and seeing if you can support you card through that. http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/. As far as I know, the package is right there in portage. 

I am aware that even once installed they are not the easiest things to configure, but tools like KWifiManager can help out as well.

Danny

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## Kragen

the first card I had was a netgear wg111t. It used a atheros chipset and ndiswrapper just about managed to keep it running for a week or so, then it nackered up and wouldnt work anymore. As far as i know ndiswrapper is the only available way of getting it running.

I decided it would be much easier to go with something with proper drivers for linux, so went for a cheap ebuyer model - SWLU-5400. they actualy sent me the SWMULZ-5400 which uses a slightly different chipset. Either way both cards use the same driver project to function under linux - the ones here (http://zd1211.ath.cx/). I managed to compile and install them, but the drivers a buggy, and because of some problem with setting the region, the card wouldnt function properly, and things like iwlist wlan0 scan would just return "no result".

I'll look into cards with prism chipsets...

I dont have a problem with the configuration of wireless in linux - once I worked out what everything did, the tools worked really nicely. The problems came from the drivers not functioning properly  :Sad: 

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## Monkeh

... Atheros chipset. net-wireless/madwifi-driver.

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## Gergan Penkov

well it does not work always, I have a d-link g520 i think, I have tried two days to make it work with the madwifi driver, it loads normally in the kernel, but could not find the AP (running wep40). 

After these futile two days I emerged ndiswrapper and copied the win driver from the supplied cd ... Well I'm still using it  :Smile: 

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## vai777

Try Atheros chipset with Madwifi drivers.

Works great!

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## Kragen

 *Monkeh wrote:*   

> ... Atheros chipset. net-wireless/madwifi-driver.

 

They dont work with usb devices, only PCI devices.

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## vai777

 *Kragen wrote:*   

>  *Monkeh wrote:*   ... Atheros chipset. net-wireless/madwifi-driver. 
> 
> They dont work with usb devices, only PCI devices.

 

That's right, only PCI and PCMCIA work great, not USB. I'm sorry, I didn't realised you wanted USB.

I have a shitty Sitecom WL-113, it uses the zd1211 drivers, and it's crap, drivers are unstable in monitor mode.

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## dhave

Though it's not normally listed among the Linux-friendly wifi PCMCIA cards, I've got a Linksys WPC54G v. 2 PCMCIA card with a TI chipset. I was using ndiswrapper successfully, then I discovered the ACX driver that you can find in portage. It works just fine. No hiccups whatsover.

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## Kragen

 *vai777 wrote:*   

>  *Kragen wrote:*    *Monkeh wrote:*   ... Atheros chipset. net-wireless/madwifi-driver. 
> 
> They dont work with usb devices, only PCI devices. 
> 
> That's right, only PCI and PCMCIA work great, not USB. I'm sorry, I didn't realised you wanted USB.
> ...

 

Hmm, you might be able to help me - apparantly the zd1211 drivers work ok in managed mode - I've figured out that the problem is that 

```
iwpriv wlan0 set_Region X
```

Did you run into that?

Apparantly I can get around it by hard-coding things & editing the source code, but I'm not a programmer and dont know how to do that (I tried something, but it didnt compile)

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## vai777

Yeah, I ran that.

I read many devices using zd1211 have big differences in behaviour, some of them work better than the others.

I can set monitor mode and sniff using airodump (setting monitor mode freezes the computer about 10% of the times  :Sad:  ). I haven't found any program to inject, aireplay is not supported due to drivers' bad quality.

The drivers do not scan properly the channels. When I run Kwifimanager I can see 2 networks. When doing

```
iwlist wlan0 scanning
```

 I get 5. It's just non sense.

By now I'm sorry, I can't help you with the code stuff   :Sad:  Anyways, I'll take a look at it.

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## Kragen

hmm, I am having some success with this wireless card, ive managed to get past the last problem with some careful hunting, but there are still loads of problems - iwlist occasionaly lists my AP, but it's usualy once every 20 or so tries (although admitedly I am far away from the AP).

Another problem is that sometimes I have to unplug and then re-connect the device for it to be recognised. I always need to do a "ifconfig wlan0 up" for it to be registered as a wireless device (i think thats why the net.wlan0 scrips is failing), and also, even when it detects an acess point, it doesnt actualy try and connect to it.

I have little hope of this card actualy becoming useable in linux in the short-term future.  :Sad: 

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## orionrobots

Of course, if the box actually has a tux pengiun printed on it, and the manufacturers claim to have linux support, then you should be withiin your rights to ask for support to get it working from the manufacturer. I think there are laws against printing that sort of thing if it does not actually hold water.

Have a go on their website to see if they have guides, or try sending them a support request for it. Failing that, you may be able to return it, and maybe buy some sort of non-USB device, PC-Card or PCI depending on machine configuration. When you return it, make sure you state its on the grounds that the claims on the box were not honour or some such thing.   :Twisted Evil: 

Danny

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## lucasschnorr

Hi,

I have worked with three wireless cards with kernel modules, not ndiswrapper stuff.

Currently I am using the first one listed here.

1 Intel 2200BG PCI

This is the output of lspci for the card.

```

06:06.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 2200BG Network Connection (rev 05)

```

with kernel module ipw2200, which can be emerged with the following ebuilds

```

net-wireless/ipw2200

net-wireless/ipw2200-firmware

```

2 D-Link DWL-G520+ PCI

Working perfectly with the following ebuilds and acx kernel module.

```

net-wireless/acx

net-wireless/acx-firmware

```

3 ZD1201 USB pen

This have been merged into kernel 2.6 series, can be found in device drivers->usb support->usb network adapters->usb zd1201 based.

It was working fine, but was a little bit slow because of the high latency communication delay with the access point.

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## mentat79

Hello,

Sorry for a somewhat stupid question.

Looking at the control panel of my laptop (in XP) , I see that I have a Texas Instruments PCI-1410 Cardbus Controller.

I recently learnt that in Linux, cardbus adapters are handled by the PCI subsystem.

Does that mean that I can get a mini PCI or PCI wireless card and I should be fine / or do I need to specifically get a cardbus wireless card?

Thanks a lot.

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## lucasschnorr

Hi,

I have a similar cardbus controller in my computer:

```

# /usr/sbin/lspci | grep Cardbus

06:09.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCIxx21/x515 Cardbus Controller

# 

```

I don`t know exactly how this Cardbus controller interacts with my wireless device.

I think my wireless is a mini-PCI card. So, I also think that wireless cards can yes

be indepedent of the cardbus stuff. I think.   :Very Happy: 

Lucas

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## e-ipi

 *mentat79 wrote:*   

> Hello,
> 
> Sorry for a somewhat stupid question.
> 
> Looking at the control panel of my laptop (in XP) , I see that I have a Texas Instruments PCI-1410 Cardbus Controller.
> ...

 

No, not necessarily.

If you have a "wireless-ready" laptop that has an empty mini-pci slot waiting for a mini-pci wireless card (and an antenna hookup), then you may indeed get a mini-pci wireless card to put in there.  

But if all you have is the cardbus pcmcia slot, then you'll need a pcmcia wireless card.  A mini-pci card will not fit in a cardbus slot.

Hope that answers the question.

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## ballantrae

If one of these companies would make it their business to set up their card to work directly with gentoo, no hassles.  Then posted a message to that effect, I have a feeling they'd sell a large number of cards overnight.

-ron

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## Kragen

maybe... my hope is that as the linux userbase improves, producers of hardware and software will be more intrested in linux support. Thats why making linux more accessible to new users is important.

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## dsd

ZD1211 will hopefully be supported better soon:

http://zd1211.ath.cx/wiki/DriverRewrite

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## Kragen

well in a few days time I will go back to uni & have my hired connection back. Hopefully the drivers will be stable enough to use by the summer.

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