Re: Wireless network cards

Hi Andrei,

With GNU/Linux, the Orinoco (Gold?) cards are always best.  They're 
manufactured now by a company Proxim and they make a 802.11 b/g model.  My 
laptop has bad-to-nonexistent support under linux for the built-in card, so I 
bought one of these Orinoco cards on eBay for pretty cheap a couple weeks ago 
and it works GREAT.  You'll find several on eBay, or just type "orinoco gold" 
into Froogle.

Just pop it in then run "ifconfig ath0 up" and then "dhclient ath0" and you're 
off and running.  I just did it this morning at the Moose.

You can also get them with external antenna connections if you're into 
wardriving, etc.  But the internal antenna is pretty good.  I was surfing on 
Panera's hotspot today from the Eat N Park parking lot.  :)

That being said, I understand that kernel support has recently been added for 
the Intel Centrino chips.  My brother has one in his laptop and he said it 
works find under gnu/linux right out of the box.

Support for most other cards is sketchy as best, as I understand it.  I've 
never had any luck with other cards, as they tend only to have Mac/Windoze 
support.

Hope this helps.

Ryan





On Wednesday 01 June 2005 15:18, Andrei Smirnov wrote:
> I need to buy a wireless network card for my HP laptop. I looked around
> and all the time I only see Windows listed under supported OS, and no
> Linux mentioned at all. Can it be the situation like was early on with
> modems, that some cards will require special Windows and only work on
> Windows? Or are they all Linux compatible?
>
> I'm looking at PCMCIA, 802.11b/g
>
> Does any one know of any deals? Or maybe can suggest a good vendor?
>
> Andrei