Easy Wireless approach...

[friedsonjm]

I have tried any number of times to get puppy working on my old laptop; I've given up, the wireless 'just won't work.'

May I suggest someone look at PCLinuxOS? They have a fantastic wireless 'wizard,' could this be added to Puppy?

jf

[paulsiu]

Can you describe what's great about it? I recall that it will allow you to select the windows driver from the windows parition?

[friedsonjm]

Much better than that! It identifies your hardware, suggests the driver, ginds the wireless network, prompts for security info, etc. Go get the live cd and try it.. amazing stuff. I like the distro, its just a bit 'too slow' for my old laptop, and I think puppy might be better.

[tempestuous]

friedsonjm, you should tell us what wifi adaptor you have (brand/model/revision no.) and which version of Puppy you are using.
There may be a driver/firmware issue at fault, which we can help you with. If this is the case, then once the driver issue has been fixed, Puppy's existing Network Wizard should work OK.

You should also tell us whether you are using WEP or WPA encryption.

[paulsiu]

tempestuous,

He does have a good point, network setup is a weakness in most distribution of Linux. There could be an improvement in how the network manager works.

I doubt that we'll ever be as slick as PClinux though, the distro's design is so consistent, I wondered if it was done entirely by one person or at least the design was dictated by one person. For Puppy, at times, look a bit cobbled together since it's a community distro.

Paul

[tempestuous]

I agree, the frontend for wifi (and other functions) could be better.
I'm just trying to get friedsonjm up and running, without waiting for a better gui.

[friedsonjm]

The wireless card is a Dlink GWL-D630 the AirplusG revision C2 Firmwear 3.01 Under PCLOS, it show up as Atheros 802.11b/g Wireles PCI Adapter

CE of Puppy was the last version was the last I tried, including all the gyrations to try to make the Windows driver work under ndiswrapper.

I use WPA, but could run into anything 'on the road.'

thanks,

jf

[tempestuous]

Please try the "ath_pci" (MADWiFi) driver before resorting to ndiswrapper. Puppy already contains ath_pci.
Your device is listed as compatible and working with this driver -
http://madwifi.org/wiki/Compatibility/D-Link
And the MADWiFi driver supports WPA encrytpion.

If no success, your problem may run deeper. Check if the PCMCIA system recognises your device with these 2 commands -

cardctl status
cardctl ident

[friedsonjm]

Success - once! The latest version [2.16?] I just downloaded last night, and was able to run the wizard and get set up and on my home wireless network. Almost gave up... but realized that the WPA driver had defaulted to 'Other' instead of atheros driver. Last night, that worked.

Today, tried to set up the same way, but WPA did not work at first, I deleted and created profiles, and finally got it working again. Saved for next boot, we will see if I get it 'back' next time...

thanks,

jf

[Dougal]

I doubt that we'll ever be as slick as PClinux though, the distro's design is so consistent, I wondered if it was done entirely by one person or at least the design was dictated by one person.

It's mainly one person, Texstar or something.

I assume being based on a big distro and using KDE also helps make things a little uniform...

[tempestuous]

the WPA driver had defaulted to 'Other' instead of atheros driver.

Actually, with Puppy's modern kernel "Other" should work better than "Atheros".
Try the updated wpa_supplicant and puppy_network_setup script -
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 052#121052

Hopefully, this will all work out-of-the-box in Puppy 2.17 when it's released.

[friedsonjm]

Yes, I'm all set now, thanks! jf