On Jul 24, 2005, at 3:56 AM, Richard Fish wrote:
Ian K wrote:
My other laptop has a nice atheros wireless card, very painless to
set
up. I dont know what
chipsets are on what cards, so perhaps you could give me a model name
and brand?
Unfortunately, neither does anybody else on this list. This is
because manufacturers have a habit of changing chipsets without
changing model numbers. So lot #1234 can be atheros, while #1235
can be intersil, #1236 can be, well you get the picture.
The best is to buy from a store with a liberal return/exchange
policy...of course it always helps if it says "supports linux" on
the box!
Yeah, if you've listened to this list, you'll know some chipsets are
good, and some are just plain bad. Bad chipsets (Broadcom, PrismGT,
ACX100, ACX111) are not supported well if at all under Linux. (Hell,
even Windows choked on a Windows-only ACX111 card.) You may have
success with the Windows drivers and NDISwrapper, but more than
likely this is one for shipping back to your e-tailer. These
chipsets being "el cheapo," they pop up in a lot of low-end consumer
wireless devices. Good chipsets (Atheros, Atmel, Intersil, Orinoco,
Prism, Prism2) are natively supported by Linux, and most of them can
be loaded from the LiveCD with the modprobe command. The rest are
usually supported by building in support when you build the kernel.
Sadly, these are more expensive because all the hardware is on the
card, and nothing is emulated via a driver (remember Winmodems vs.
hardware modems? This is it all over again.) But you do get what
you pay for, as a lot of enterprise-level solutions have these
chipsets, and they boast excellent reliability, compatibility and range.
Any other chipset, just Google. Some manufacturers stick to one
chipset (like Apple does Broadcom). However, most manufacturers
often change chipsets during production without warning, keeping the
same model number and just tacking on a "Revision B," often written
on the card only but most do write it on the box in tiny print. Just
wait until no one's looking and open up the box and check :-)
As for "supports Linux," there are far too many distros, drivers,
hacks and configurations to test with. Maybe they tested Debian with
MADWIFI? Slackware with NDISwrapper... and which Windows driver? If
it says Linux compatible, don't take it as a green light. Take it as
a yield sign instead--look first, then go.
If you've got a laptop, bring it and a LiveCD to the store (if you
don't buy it online) and give it a whirl... with permission, of
course. And slip the boy at Best Buy a couple Alexander Hamiltons
($10 bills, in case you forgot your U.S. history) for making him put
up with you testing a million different cards and not finding
anything that works. :-P
--
Colin
--
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