[lug] Linux and wireless

[Ken MacFerrin]

Michael Belanger wrote:
> Greetings.
> I need to get my linux workstation hooked to a wireless network.
> From what I am reading, it seems pretty hit and miss for a supported card.
> One suggestion was to not mess with it at all and get a wireless bridge.
> 
> Does anyone here have any success stories or opinions regarding wireless 
> cards?  Is there a list of cards/chipsets that are supported in the 2.6 
> kernel? (Fedora Core 4)
> 

I've had good luck with the Atheros 5212 chipset and madwifi drivers 
under the 2.6 kernel with both Debian and Gentoo.  Specifially using a 
Linksys WPC55AG PC card on a laptop myself but there appears to be a few 
D-Link PCI cards based on the same chipset:
http://www.mattfoster.clara.co.uk/notes/madwifi-hw
http://www.linuxquestions.org/linux/answers/Networking/How_to_Simple_Installation_of_Madwifi_in_Fedora_Core_4_for_Anthros_chipped_cards

For about the same price though you can pickup a Linksys WRT54G, load up 
the OpenWRT distro and use it in "client mode" or in a WDS mesh.  This 
is my preferred method for a workstation as you don't have to mess with 
wifi drivers in your distro and you can have multiple machines behind 
the client router.  Just make sure you get a Version 4 or older router 
as the new ones are currently running VxWorks instead of linux.
-Ken