Which WiFi-card should I buy?

[hgpuke]

Hi! I am helping my sister in law to set up an old computer (deskside) with Puppy so that she can have a computer of her own to surf and read e-mail. The family will share the Internet connection via a wireless router. Fortunately, we have not yet bought a wireless card, and I understand that there are many, many difficulties in getting WiFi to work with Linux in general and Puppy in particular, so I am asking fellow puppeteers (?) for advice on a suitable PCI card that will work with as little manual labour as possible. The most common brands around here seems to be

• Dlink
  Netgear
  Linksys
  Belkin
  Jensen

Can you please recommend one or two that will "just work" with Puppy?
Thanks,
Hans-G

[Ian]

Have a look at this on the wiki:

http://puppylinux.org/wikka/WirelessWorking

[kirk]

You might want to check-out the drivers that tempestuous have compiled for puppy:

http://www.murga.org/%7Epuppy/viewtopic.php?t=4628

Keep in mind model numbers don't mean much, you have to find out what chip set it uses. To do that you can google the model number AND the revision number. Model numbers stay the same but the chip set used changes.

[Lobster]

Go for one that works certainly

Also look at 23 April entry here:
http://www.puppylinux.com/news.htm

Better support for wifi in Puppy2 (Beta out in next few days)

[jb007]

Fry's Electronic sale Airlink Super G AWLH4030 (Atheros chipset) for $15.00 regularly. I like the extent range of Airlink MIMO XR AWLH5025 so still playing around with it. I am hoping RT61.ko will be add in the next version of puppy2.

Software:
http://mymirrors.homelinux.org/puppy/wireless/

Compatibiltity link for MadWifi:
http://madwifi.org/wiki/Compatibility

[pythoncoder]

The choice of card is absolutely crucial. I spent a lot of time fruitlessly trying to get three different wireless USB adaptors to work. A particular hazard is changing versions of chipsets, and it's very hard to establish the exact version before you buy. One of the cards was chosen because it had a Prism chipset which appeared to be widely supported. However it emerged that it was a recent version of the chipset which has no Linux support whatsoever.

In general older cards seem to be a better bet, as there has been more time for the device driver gurus to write drivers.

I eventually had success with a secondhand MSI PC54G2 PCI adapter, as recommended on the wiki. However, contrary to the instructions in the wiki, it didn't work with ndiswrapper. It did work with the ralink-cvs-20060323.tar.gz driver in the Puppy list on http://mymirrors.homelinux.org/puppy/wireless/

To generalise my advice, buy a card which is both recommended in the Wiki and for which there are Puppy drivers.

Pete

[pooklaroux]

I'm using a 2wire card that is supposed to have the orinoco gold chipset, on the back it says it was made by agere. It runs with a driver that was already loaded in puppy -- no problems there. Just use WAG and the ethernet wizard to get it set up on your network. I got my card from ebay. I wouldn't recommend my seller, but many people sell these orinoco gold chipset 2wire branded cards. My cost was less than $20.

[tempestuous]

It did work with the ralink-cvs-20060323.tar.gz driver ...

After compiling all available Linux wifi drivers, I can say that the Ralink drivers stand out. Each Ralink driver is only about 200K in size, requires no separate firmware files, and has no other module dependencies such as separate ieee80211 modules or cryptographic modules. And still it supports the advanced feature of WPA encryption.
Wifi adaptors which contain Ralink chipsets are listed here http://ralink.rapla.net/

Intel PRO/Wireless adaptors work acceptably under Linux, but if I was ever to get a "Centrino" laptop which contain these adaptors internally as miniPCI, the first thing I would do is remove the PRO/Wireless and replace it with a Ralink.

One of the cards was chosen because it had a Prism chipset which appeared to be widely supported. However it emerged that it was a recent version of the chipset which has no Linux support whatsoever

When Puppy2 is finalised, I will provide the Prism54usb "islsm" driver.

[kwiller]

Having been through the pain of connecting my Kubuntu (my distro of choice until I found Puppy ) running computer to my home network using a usb wifi connector I took a different approach when I bought a new Dell machine.

I use this machine as a development/testing box and it multiboots into Kubuntu, Fedora, PC-BSD, Slackware, and Puppy of course, amongst others. Not wanting to spend time and effort finding the right wifi card and drivers for all these distros (not to mention other distros I run as VMs under WinXP), I invested in a Buffalo AirStation Wireless Ethernet Converter.

All distros I have tried have no trouble using the Ethernet connection and the AirStation handles the connection to my wifi home network. Result - no matter what distro I'm actually running I always have network/internet access.

[jb007]

update on the Airlink 101 AWLH5025 (MIMO) & AWLH4030 (Super G):

I was not able to get the AWLH5025 to work in Puppy Linux v1.0.8r1. However, the AWLH4030 is working just fine using Wifi104beta2.pup with WAG 0.3.2.

[pythoncoder]

...
I invested in a Buffalo AirStation Wireless Ethernet Converter.
...

That looks like a very neat solution. I wish I'd known about that device a couple of months ago!

Pete

[Bikerbob]

update on the Airlink 101 AWLH5025 (MIMO) & AWLH4030 (Super G):

I was not able to get the AWLH5025 to work in Puppy Linux v1.0.8r1. However, the AWLH4030 is working just fine using Wifi104beta2.pup with WAG 0.3.2.

I have this card, and just found Puppy linux.. looks great.

The OS does find the card, uses the ALTH_0 driver.. seems to work.. can scan the networks etc.. I have setup my WEP as per the rest of my network, but connot make a connection.

What is the above you got to work? Wifi104?? WAG?? Thanks

James

[Bikerbob]

So, Puppy would seem to have a driver specific to this chipset in 2.16

I also see Madwifi has a driver...

and also the items in the above posts..

Anyone have any experience as to what SHOULD work? or what I am not getting in order to get this running?

thanks

James

[freke]

I can only give the experience of an old bloke, I bought a
a devolo Homeplug adapter, cost was £99.99 from Maplin and it worked straight from the box on every pc that I have tried it on.
See my post on the subject. Hope it helps

Ted

old age always comes at a bad time of life

[tempestuous]

update on the Airlink 101 AWLH5025 (MIMO) & AWLH4030 (Super G):

I was not able to get the AWLH5025 to work in Puppy Linux v1.0.8r1. However, the AWLH4030 is working just fine using Wifi104beta2.pup with WAG 0.3.2.

I have this card...

You must be referring to the Airlink AWLH4030, since it has an Atheros chipset. The AWLH5025 has a Ralink chipset.

The OS does find the card, uses the ALTH_0 driver..

Not quite. The driver would be "ath_pci" (MADWiFi) which creates an interface identified as "ath0".

but connot make a connection.

Sometimes the Network Wizard issues its setup commands in a fashion which fails to work. We're working on a fix.
In the meantime you can probably use Rutilt instead. Just make sure that the ath_pci module is loaded before you launch Rutilt.

[Bikerbob]

OK thanks, except I have the 4030 which is Altheros so I dont think Rutilt is what I need.

I can get everything to where it SHOULD work.. it just dosent.

James

[tempestuous]

Yes, I knew you had the AWLH4030.
Rutilt was originally written for Ralink devices, but it will configure ANY wifi driver supported by iwconfig.
Just make sure your driver, ath_pci, is loaded first.

[jonyo]

If you can go with a usb dongle, the d-link dwl-g122 ver b1 has worked A-1 on every pute (~10) I've tried, lap & desk, with pup vers 2.12 through 6 usin ndiswrapper & the Netrtusb .inf file.

Nothin more than a few clicks away..

Also works with either usb 1.1 or 2.

I don't think pup has any particular wifi scenario more so that any other. I'd say it's better than most & was the first linux one I figured out.

[jonyo]

Dunno what vers pup your usin ? (they're all a bit diff with wifi setups..wag, rutilt, net wiz..) but i'm assuming a recent one (which doesn't have wag). I had many wifi hookup scenarios with vers 2.12 to 6. One of the most common ones was when everythin looked good to go wifi, hada hit auto dhcp, many times more than once to finally get on the net. Just suggested that to someone else & it took him 8 shots .There are fixes for this but i didn't bother. I have terminal konsole phobia

I've only used wep 64 hex.

update on the Airlink 101 AWLH5025 (MIMO) & AWLH4030 (Super G):

I was not able to get the AWLH5025 to work in Puppy Linux v1.0.8r1. However, the AWLH4030 is working just fine using Wifi104beta2.pup with WAG 0.3.2.

I have this card, and just found Puppy linux.. looks great.

The OS does find the card, uses the ALTH_0 driver.. seems to work.. can scan the networks etc.. I have setup my WEP as per the rest of my network, but connot make a connection.

What is the above you got to work? Wifi104?? WAG?? Thanks

James

[Bikerbob]

Yes, I knew you had the AWLH4030.
Rutilt was originally written for Ralink devices, but it will configure ANY wifi driver supported by iwconfig.
Just make sure your driver, ath_pci, is loaded first.

AHH.. ok, I will give it a try.

James