[juneau-lug] Re: community wireless project

  • From: James Zuelow <e5z8652@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: juneau-lug@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2004 05:54:46 -0800

On Mon, 13 Sep 2004 16:11:33 -0800 (AKDT)
"Myron Davis" <myrond@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

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> 
> Great!
> 
> Absolutely everything helps, that would be great.  This is somewhat
> off-topic here so if you wouldn't mind subscribing to
> talk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx we can move the conversation over there and I'll
> reply to you in depth :)
> 

Not really off topic.  Just about all of the brand name 802.11b cards will 
"just work" with a modern distribution.

The 802.11g cards are a little different, but the situation seems to be 
improving quickly.  Many of them will plug and play with a distro like Mandrake 
that aggressively pushes new drivers.  Although Mandrake in particular seems to 
have a very small mindshare here in Juneau.

I have a NetGear WG511 802.11g card running in my laptop (the old 133 that was 
at the last meeting).  It takes a little bit of hassle to set it up for Linux, 
but once that's done it runs great.  It was on sale at a Best Buy in Denver 
this spring, so I picked it up without any Linux compatibility research at all. 
 It didn't plug and play with Debian stable (no surprises there), but worked 
after a few hours of fiddling and extracting files from the Windows drivers.  
Upgrading to Debian testing & a new kernel didn't break anything, so I guess it 
is "stable."

The Linksys 802.11g cards at Fred Meyer's are better supported from what I read 
on the net.  My wife has one here for her laptop, and I can see what Debian 
testing wants to run it - haven't tried it.  Since I don't have an access point 
at home and I'm not taking classes at UAS this semester, I don't drag out the 
wireless cards very often.  Since these cards are available locally and are not 
very expensive I'll play with it later today & let you know.  The coolness 
factor goes up when you consider that the Linksys access point at Fred's can 
run a custom, build-it-yourself-if-you-have-the-inclination Linux kernel.

Cheers,

James

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