802.11b under Linux

Crayz9000 · Post by **Crayz9000** » 2003-08-31 07:53pm

Since the uni I'm currently attending, Cal State Northridge, uses an 802.11b network in their engineering building, I'm looking at getting a wireless PC card for my Thinkpad, which (will have) Mandrake 9.1 and Windows 2000 dual-booted.

I haven't had much luck in locating a card yet; most of them seem to be based on the Texas Instruments chipset which doesn't work (well, if at all) with Linux, at least from what I've read. Are there any suggestions, or should I just give up and use Windows when I need to access network stuff?

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2003-08-31 11:30pm

You could try Proxim Orinoco's stuff - I hear they're supported well under Linux. Cisco's Aironet 350 works - but you'll need to flash it down to a 4.X firmware (it's the card I'm currently using). The newest Linux kernel might support the 5.X firmware.

Anything based on the Prism (the old one) chipset should work fine.

Crayz9000 · Post by **Crayz9000** » 2003-09-01 12:20am

Well, I finally decided to get the Proxim Orinoco earlier, after reading that it was supported. Pretty damned expensive card, though... but considering that TI is basically flooding the market with cheap chips, I'm not surprised.

Now to see how much legwork I still need to do in Mandrake 9.1 to get it working properly. Most of the documents I found were related to earlier versions of RedHat (before 7.3), so I'm suspecting that things have changed quite a bit...