*sigh* Anyone having wireless working on a linux machine?

[Abraham Vionas]

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I've tried something like eight different distributions and the best I've
had yet was with Suse 9.1.and even then it only correctly detected my
builtin wireless, for some reason it didn't correctly configure it. I'm
close to giving up on Linux again for another year or two, but I thought I'd
ask and see if anyone else has successfully overcome this challenge already
and what kind of advice they'd be willing to provide. The problem seems to
be that regardless what distro I use I'll have to do some manual settings,
and since I'm a noob the best distro would be the one with the least amount
of learning curve. I know some of you are BSD fans so I tried FreeBSD but
couldn't get it to even install. : -(



Regards, Abe


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[Carl Youngblood]

I've tried something like eight different distributions and the best I've
had yet was with Suse 9.1.and even then it only correctly detected my
builtin wireless, for some reason it didn't correctly configure it. I'm
close to giving up on Linux again for another year or two, but I thought I'd
ask and see if anyone else has successfully overcome this challenge already
and what kind of advice they'd be willing to provide. The problem seems to
be that regardless what distro I use I'll have to do some manual settings,
and since I'm a noob the best distro would be the one with the least amount
of learning curve. I know some of you are BSD fans so I tried FreeBSD but
couldn't get it to even install. : -(

Forgive me, but what does this have to do with Ruby? Did you mean to
post this to a linux users group or something?

 

[Abraham Vionas]

Whoops, sorry, I forgot to mention that a lot of the reason I'm
investigating Linux is because being on Windows has been such a complicating
factor in my drive to learn and use Ruby. I just thought I'd pose my
question to the community at large. Sorry I forgot to tag it with the Off
Topic.

Regards, Abe

-----Original Message-----
From: Carl Youngblood [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Friday, December 03, 2004 1:35 PM
To: ruby-talk ML
Subject: Re: *sigh* Anyone having wireless working on a linux machine?

I've tried something like eight different distributions and the best I've
had yet was with Suse 9.1.and even then it only correctly detected my
builtin wireless, for some reason it didn't correctly configure it. I'm
close to giving up on Linux again for another year or two, but I thought I'd
ask and see if anyone else has successfully overcome this challenge already
and what kind of advice they'd be willing to provide. The problem seems to
be that regardless what distro I use I'll have to do some manual settings,
and since I'm a noob the best distro would be the one with the least amount
of learning curve. I know some of you are BSD fans so I tried FreeBSD but
couldn't get it to even install. : -(

Forgive me, but what does this have to do with Ruby? Did you mean to
post this to a linux users group or something?

 

[Michael DeHaan]

Whoops, sorry, I forgot to mention that a lot of the reason I'm
investigating Linux is because being on Windows has been such a complicating
factor in my drive to learn and use Ruby. I just thought I'd pose my
question to the community at large. Sorry I forgot to tag it with the Off
Topic.

Regards, Abe

Options:

* SSH from your Windows or Mac laptop into a non-laptop Linux box.
This works for anything non-GUI oriented, which is most of what I do
(especially when dealing with rails, you don't care).
* Just develop natively on a Powerbook or iBook. I'm doing things
with rb-opengl right now, and it works great. Most everything is
there, but bindings to certain GUI toolkits may take some effort.
* X-Forward from your Linux box to a Powerbook or Windows machine
using an X-Windows emulator.
* VNC

--Michael

 

[James Britt]

They're right, it's off-topic. But there's likely a local linux user's
group in your area that would be more than happy to help you out. If
configuring your wireless card is the only issue, then you're almost
there and I wouldn't give up quite yet.

I had a Lucent/Orinoco WiFi card running under RH 7.x a few years ago.
Amazingly easy; I believe the chip set in the Wavelan (?) cards is well
understood. So easy I couldn't tell you how I did it, other than follow
some bundled README.

But for general PC wifi, folk have advised me to go get a WiFi bridge.
Linux just sees a network card, so no driver/lib madness.

Otherwise, you have to know that a given card uses a particular chip,
and as far as I can tell not even all cards from the same vendor are
consistent that way.

The downside is cost. Bridges are more expensive than mere cards.

Good luck. I think Linux Journal or Linux Magazine recently did an
issue on WiFi, so they may have stuff on-line.


James

 

[Luca Pireddu]

Options:

* SSH from your Windows or Mac laptop into a non-laptop Linux box.
This works for anything non-GUI oriented, which is most of what I do
(especially when dealing with rails, you don't care).
* Just develop natively on a Powerbook or iBook. I'm doing things
with rb-opengl right now, and it works great. Most everything is
there, but bindings to certain GUI toolkits may take some effort.
* X-Forward from your Linux box to a Powerbook or Windows machine
using an X-Windows emulator.
* VNC

--Michael

Try posting to comp.os.linux.hardware or comp.os.linux.misc. There's been
some discussion on the topic there lately. Also, try searching the newsgroup
archives groups.google.com.

If it's any help, the situation right now is that a few chipsets are supported
by native Linux drivers, while the rest are left to try using their windows
driver through a compatibility layer called ndiswrapper. A quick search on
google returns some results that may be helpful

http://www.google.com/linux?hl=en&lr=&q=wireless
http://www.google.com/linux?hl=en&lr=&q=wireless+howto

In any case, although there probably isn't a program that will let you
point-and-click your way through the problem, you should be able to get your
card working. You won't be the first Linux user on a wireless LAN!

Luca

 

[Michael DeHaan]

My last response on this thread, but I thought I would add...

There are some cards for which ndiswrapper will not work with WEP, and
definitely not with WPA (certain Broadcom chips, especially).
YMMV... There are online petitions for Broadcom to release Linux
drivers for these chipsets, though they have been met with no
response.