Linux wireless drivers

[FatBusinessman]

Hi all,

I'm currently considering setting my home up with a wireless (802.11g) network. My network currently consists of:

• Two Windows-only machines
• A dual-boot Windows/Linux machine
• A Linux-only desktop
• and a Linux router for the cable modem

However, to my dismay, I've found that Linux drivers for wireless products are, shall we say, a little thin on the ground (i.e. no-one seems to have written any).

One potential solution to this seems to be using 'bridges' which connect wired networks to wireless ones. However, this strikes me as a rather clumsy (and expensive - bridges are about £20-30 more expensive than PCI cards) solution.

Any ideas? Pwease?

(p.s. Could some kindly admin move this to the OS forum?)

 

[FatBusinessman]

Cheers Jonteh

 

[(Shovel)]

You might want to try the 2.6 Kernel.

See here and search for a heading that reads: "Wireless Devices". It talks about some new Wireless API that may or may not affect your problem:

The largest change here is that major components of the short range subsystems for the various supported cards and protocols has been merged into a single "wireless" subsystem and API. This merge resolves a number of minor incompatibilities in the way different devices have been handled and strengthens Linux's support for the subsystem by making a central set of userspace tools that will work with all supported devices. In addition to just standardization, Linux 2.6 introduces a number of overall improvements including better capability to notify in the event of a state change (such as a device that has a "roaming" state) and a change to TCP to better handle periodic delay spikes which occur with wireless devices. Due to the immediate desire to better support wireless devices in the current Linux 2.4 kernel, many of these changes have already been back-ported and are available for use.

Not idea what version of 2.4 this claimed back-porting is in though, nor to what degree it has happened.

 

[Sibanac]

there are a few cards out there that seem to work


http://team.vantronix.net/ar5k/