I am having heartburn getting my Netgear WG511T wifi card going. I have read enough horror stories on this and other linux forums to think that there must be a better way.
Think about it. Most people don't give a rat's ass what kind of wifi card they have. What they want, is anything that works. So, let's give them that. Here's how to do it.
1) Research a reasonably-priced, reasonably featured card that is pretty mainstream, will be around for a while or at least exists in reasonable supply, supports the mainstream encryption schemes and runs using a native linux driver.
2) Convince Barry to put that driver in the next Puppy release in the easiest possible form of setup, or that even automatically installs and connects at boot if the card is present. Or just remaster...
3) Buy a boatload of those cards, and sell them on this forum and on the other Puppy distribution web pages. You could even have an option of providing Puppy CDs together with this wireless card as a package. If you don't want to handle them, work out an exclusive deal with a regular vendor, making sure he keeps them in supply and the chipset stays the same, etc.
Ideally you'd have a PCMCIA version, a PCI version and (gulp!) a USB version. In fact if a viable example of the latter can be found, maybe only that should be offered, due to the universal nature of USB (but I've read that wifi and USB is not a good mix)...
I'd pay a pretty significant premium over the entrepreneur's cost just to get a painless install of wifi, guaranteed to work. It is the one item preventing me from "converting" from Windows to linux right now. I bet many others feel the same way. Puppy won't really reach its potential, that of weaning many disgusted Windows users away from that OS, unless some better way to get wifi running exists for them.
Easy WIFI install: an entrepreneurial opportunity
Easy WIFI install: an entrepreneurial opportunity
Last edited by PaulBx1 on Sat 24 Jun 2006, 13:53, edited 2 times in total.
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marksouth2000
- Posts: 622
- Joined: Wed 05 Apr 2006, 20:43
Re: Easy WIFI install: an entrepreneurial opportunity
The set of things that works is a proper subset of "any kind of hardware".PaulBx1 wrote: Think about it. Most people don't give a rat's ass what kind of wifi card they have. What they want, is anything that works.
Your goals are, and will remain, mutually incompatible.
You miss my point. I did not mean to say people want any old thing they happen to have on hand, to work. In fact I am explicitly denying that - no rational person will continue trying to get non-compatible hardware to work. I meant that they are willing to spend money and get new hardware if they are sure that will work.
Time is money. Most people understand the tradeoffs; often they have no time or inclination to go through some godawful series of steps, begging the overworked folks on this forum for help in the process. There is no efficiency in that path. The forum cannot support any more than a few newbies at any one time trying to get their wireless working. That is a dead-end for expansion of Puppy.
Another way to look at it, is this: does it make sense to let one piece of cheap hardware stand in the way of peoples' adoption of a great new operating system? No! So find a way to remove that obstacle.
To make Puppy a serious contender, one has to ask if certain things are possible, reasonable, and if they will produce the desired goal. I've done that in my initial post. I'm not sure there is not a snag somewhere in the plan, but someone who is familiar with wireless setup, and wants to earn some money on the side, ought to take a look at it.
Time is money. Most people understand the tradeoffs; often they have no time or inclination to go through some godawful series of steps, begging the overworked folks on this forum for help in the process. There is no efficiency in that path. The forum cannot support any more than a few newbies at any one time trying to get their wireless working. That is a dead-end for expansion of Puppy.
Another way to look at it, is this: does it make sense to let one piece of cheap hardware stand in the way of peoples' adoption of a great new operating system? No! So find a way to remove that obstacle.
To make Puppy a serious contender, one has to ask if certain things are possible, reasonable, and if they will produce the desired goal. I've done that in my initial post. I'm not sure there is not a snag somewhere in the plan, but someone who is familiar with wireless setup, and wants to earn some money on the side, ought to take a look at it.
Opportunity
This seems to be a good plan - I guess we should try to get suggestions about what device to support. I have visited stores and one inexpensive brand is DLink, including the USB dongle type, but the installation of its driver is still being perfected in this forum.
Actually, my recent 9-day stay in Singapore did not give me opportunity to browse the Net with Puppy as am yet at a loss in installing wi-fi support.
I fully agree with you that an out-of-the-box working wi-fi in Puppy will help a lot of people (me included
).
Actually, my recent 9-day stay in Singapore did not give me opportunity to browse the Net with Puppy as am yet at a loss in installing wi-fi support.
I fully agree with you that an out-of-the-box working wi-fi in Puppy will help a lot of people (me included
).
Paul, Puppy is still young, and growing fast. What makes Puppy a serious contender is Barry's genius and hard work, plus the support of the Puppy community. For instance, are you familiar with the Puppy Wiki? Ian's WirelessWorking page seems to be a start toward what you seem to want, if not quite in the same way.
[url=http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=69321][color=blue]Puppy Help 101 - an interactive tutorial for Lupu 5.25[/color][/url]
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Rickrandom
- Posts: 195
- Joined: Sat 21 Jan 2006, 05:35
- Location: Bedfordshire, UK
I concur that making things such as wifi easy will maximise the chance of something as good as Puppy being more widely adopted.
A lot of people don't have the patience to work out how to do these things, although it's not always straightforward under Windows....
One thing I thought was (nearly) very good was NickBiker's web-cam wizard, which uses a live internet connection to find the right driver, then loads it. (Sadly it didn't work for me and I'm waiting for him to come back from holiday, but the whole concept seems very good).
Then Puppy doesn't need to contain lots of unnecessary drivers, and more can be added to an internet site as they become available.
I would guess that anyone who has a wireless connection, also has a wired connection, even if they rarely use it. They could connect wired first (very easy with Puppy) run the appropriate wizard which would find out what type of card it it, download and install the appropriate driver, and configure the wireless connection.
While I would agree with the idea of a preferred Puppy card, more and more laptops have wireless built in, so you can't choose the card.
A lot of people don't have the patience to work out how to do these things, although it's not always straightforward under Windows....
One thing I thought was (nearly) very good was NickBiker's web-cam wizard, which uses a live internet connection to find the right driver, then loads it. (Sadly it didn't work for me and I'm waiting for him to come back from holiday, but the whole concept seems very good).
Then Puppy doesn't need to contain lots of unnecessary drivers, and more can be added to an internet site as they become available.
I would guess that anyone who has a wireless connection, also has a wired connection, even if they rarely use it. They could connect wired first (very easy with Puppy) run the appropriate wizard which would find out what type of card it it, download and install the appropriate driver, and configure the wireless connection.
While I would agree with the idea of a preferred Puppy card, more and more laptops have wireless built in, so you can't choose the card.
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marksouth2000
- Posts: 622
- Joined: Wed 05 Apr 2006, 20:43
Quite the reverse. I got your point. You, however, missed mine. Your desire is rational, but your goals are still mutually opposed.PaulBx1 wrote:You miss my point.
The problem is that the only way to define "good hardware" is as "that which works". Wireless stuff works when the manufacturers release specs, and not when they don't (by and large - I'm not going the whole pedantic hog here).
However, the manufacturer who makes the chip is not the same manufacturer who sells the shrinkwrapped box. The latter frequently chops and changes according to what's available.
Concrete example. I have a Surecom EP-9428-g Cardbus wireless card. I bought it (and so did others) because I read (at the FSF site) that it uses the Ralink 2500 chipset, and Ralink have released an open source driver. All well and good. It turns out there are several versions of the EP-9428-g. According to Surecom, some used the Ralink chip, others used the Texas chip (and hence no Linux driver, Texas won't release specs on their chips).
In fact, the card I have is built around an RTL-8185 chipset ... even Surecom don't know what's in their cards!
(Ubuntu 6.06LTS worked from boot with this card, all I had to do was pick an ESSID.)
Now, at last, my point: how do you expect anyone to write a complete set of drivers when some chipset info is secret? And when the makers don't even know which version is which?
The simpler approach is to buy ONLY hardware that is already known to work, or carry an Ubuntu 6.06LTS liveCD with you to the shop....
I had later modified my initial post to make clear it would only make sense if the chipset were kept constant; perhaps you missed that. Whether it is possible to do such a thing (e.g getting an agreement from a vendor to supply such) is another question altogether. I'm guessing (and only guessing) that at least some manufacturers print chipset info on their boxes; such information would be one of the criteria for selection I would guess.
Which is a fine example demonstrating the current procedure is broken, wiki or no wiki. You are simply not going to get people to adopt linux en masse under conditions like that.Concrete example. I have a Surecom EP-9428-g Cardbus wireless card. I bought it (and so did others) because I read (at the FSF site) that it uses the Ralink 2500 chipset, and Ralink have released an open source driver. All well and good. It turns out there are several versions of the EP-9428-g. According to Surecom, some used the Ralink chip, others used the Texas chip (and hence no Linux driver, Texas won't release specs on their chips).
Actually, I'm not expecting anyone to write one driver, much less a set of them. I'm proposing that someone take the information that is out there, find the best candidates (including existing drivers), find a vendor who will supply him cards and guarantee a certain chipset in them (assuming chipset info is available to the vendor, which again would be a criterion for selection of a certain card). Perhaps some part of this is impossible, perhaps no one would ever be able to nail down the chipset in any step of the process, for example. I don't know. But it's worth finding out.Now, at last, my point: how do you expect anyone to write a complete set of drivers when some chipset info is secret? And when the makers don't even know which version is which?
Er, I thought that was the whole point of this.The simpler approach is to buy ONLY hardware that is already known to work...
Now THAT will get tons of folks jumping off the Windows bandwagon...or carry an Ubuntu 6.06LTS liveCD with you to the shop
Rick, I was not proposing a lot of unnecessary drivers, but one good one. In fact it already has a few pre-loaded if I'm not mistaken. Throw out those that are uncommon, and add the one favored driver that goes with the card we are talking about.Then Puppy doesn't need to contain lots of unnecessary drivers, and more can be added to an internet site as they become available.
Well, yes, that's an issue. But there are lots of old laptops out there. And the procedure with a new one would be this: put some effort into getting the built-in wireless going. But if (when?) that fails, buy the Puppy-supported PCMCIA card, slap it in, and go web-surfing.While I would agree with the idea of a preferred Puppy card, more and more laptops have wireless built in, so you can't choose the card.
To reply to my own post: It is not actually needed that a given card only have one chipset. If all examples of a given card had two different chipsets, both of which have good native linux driver support, that would be good enough. Puppy would then need to have both those drivers pre-installed, and the boot script would query the card and use one or the other.
Not the ideal situation, but good enough.
Not the ideal situation, but good enough.
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laptopnewbee
- Posts: 166
- Joined: Sun 20 Aug 2006, 03:43
from PaulBx1
a better plan might be to look at other distros and find ways to give access to download addons based on them (see below).
from marksouth2000
from Rickrandom
does puppy even actually see my card slot properly? puppy loads so fast that i can't read any of the lines to see if it does. i do plan on looking for the logs next time i boot puppy.
i hope i credited the quotes properly here, but i didn't see any othe way to bring together the parts of the posts that applied to my pov.
i personally am not about to run out and buy another wifi card (i already have two) and i don't think there are so many who will. while i haven't tested my second card with puppy it is already not cost effective for me to have two of them.Think about it. Most people don't give a rat's ass what kind of wifi card they have. What they want, is anything that works.
a better plan might be to look at other distros and find ways to give access to download addons based on them (see below).
from marksouth2000
my netgear wg511u needed me to run ndiswrapper for mandriva one disk, but while it worked under kubuntu right out of the box (no need for ndiswrapper), i can't get it to work so far under puppy (ndiswrapper fails to help here)(Ubuntu 6.06LTS worked from boot with this card, all I had to do was pick an ESSID.)
Now, at last, my point: how do you expect anyone to write a complete set of drivers when some chipset info is secret? And when the makers don't even know which version is which?
The simpler approach is to buy ONLY hardware that is already known to work, or carry an Ubuntu 6.06LTS liveCD with you to the shop....
from Rickrandom
this also leads to another question:While I would agree with the idea of a preferred Puppy card, more and more laptops have wireless built in, so you can't choose the card.
does puppy even actually see my card slot properly? puppy loads so fast that i can't read any of the lines to see if it does. i do plan on looking for the logs next time i boot puppy.
i hope i credited the quotes properly here, but i didn't see any othe way to bring together the parts of the posts that applied to my pov.
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tempestuous
- Posts: 5464
- Joined: Fri 10 Jun 2005, 05:12
- Location: Australia
Run "cardctl status" and "cardctl ident" and "cardctl info" to find out.laptopnewbee wrote:does puppy even actually see my card slot properly?
You have an Atheros wifi chipset, which is supported by the MADWiFi driver. Obviously Kubuntu contains madwifi. For Puppy, get the madwifi driver here http://dotpups.de/dotpups/Wifi/laptopnewbee wrote:my netgear wg511u needed me to run ndiswrapper for mandriva one disk, but while it worked under kubuntu right out of the box (no need for ndiswrapper)
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laptopnewbee
- Posts: 166
- Joined: Sun 20 Aug 2006, 03:43
ok, now that i have solved (with hunted up help) my problem geting puppy to connect by wifi (the only connection choice i have at the moment is wifi), i can say that there is even less need for me to agree with the one card idea, but maybe a prefered card idea would work... but then isn't that sorta like checking for compatable hardware?
now to the meat of this post.
i found out that for some reason the correct driver for my card will not work with ndiswrapper under puppy2.02:
sh-3.1# ndiswrapper -l
Installed drivers:
2802w driver installed
airplus driver installed
bcmwl5 driver installed
bcmwl5a driver installed
gplus driver installed
mrv8k51 driver installed
mrv8ka51 driver installed
net8180 driver installed
neta3ab driver installed, hardware present
netadm11 driver installed
netdlwl driver installed
netwg51u invalid driver!
ntpr11ab driver installed
rt2500 driver installed
w22n51 driver installed
w70n51 driver installed
i really don't know yet which of those drivers is the one that works, or where i got them from (they were in ether in madwifi, or wifidotpup), but the one that came with the card is "netwg51u" which you can see is commented as "invalid", the card is a netgear wg511u double 108 that operates on a b and g.
the other part of my problem was that wag wasn't working for me ether, something that reading the post linked here http://www.murga.org/~puppy/viewtopic.php?t=9753. i used the RutilT download, and i like the graphic interface it has.
anyway i don't know if i should have posted this someplace else, but if so i hope the moderator(s) will understand when i say i pulled an allnighter getting this far with puppy.
now to go post my laptop specs as stuff that works.
now to the meat of this post.
i found out that for some reason the correct driver for my card will not work with ndiswrapper under puppy2.02:
sh-3.1# ndiswrapper -l
Installed drivers:
2802w driver installed
airplus driver installed
bcmwl5 driver installed
bcmwl5a driver installed
gplus driver installed
mrv8k51 driver installed
mrv8ka51 driver installed
net8180 driver installed
neta3ab driver installed, hardware present
netadm11 driver installed
netdlwl driver installed
netwg51u invalid driver!
ntpr11ab driver installed
rt2500 driver installed
w22n51 driver installed
w70n51 driver installed
i really don't know yet which of those drivers is the one that works, or where i got them from (they were in ether in madwifi, or wifidotpup), but the one that came with the card is "netwg51u" which you can see is commented as "invalid", the card is a netgear wg511u double 108 that operates on a b and g.
the other part of my problem was that wag wasn't working for me ether, something that reading the post linked here http://www.murga.org/~puppy/viewtopic.php?t=9753. i used the RutilT download, and i like the graphic interface it has.
anyway i don't know if i should have posted this someplace else, but if so i hope the moderator(s) will understand when i say i pulled an allnighter getting this far with puppy.
now to go post my laptop specs as stuff that works.
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tempestuous
- Posts: 5464
- Joined: Fri 10 Jun 2005, 05:12
- Location: Australia
Those drivers you listed are all Windows drivers, probably from the wifi-beta package. They can be "wrapped" by ndiswrapper to work in Linux. There's no guarantee that any of these drivers will work for your particular adaptor. Preferably you should use the Windows driver which came with your adaptor when you bought it ... and even then, there's no guarantee of success. ndiswrapper compatibility is a messy subject. The best resource is the ndiswrapper compatibility webpage.
Better still, do as I previously suggested and avoid ndiswrapper altogether. MADWiFi is a true Linux driver.
Better still, do as I previously suggested and avoid ndiswrapper altogether. MADWiFi is a true Linux driver.
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laptopnewbee
- Posts: 166
- Joined: Sun 20 Aug 2006, 03:43
thanks for closing that question for me.tempestuous wrote:Those drivers you listed are all Windows drivers, probably from the wifi-beta package.
i think you missed something in my post, i had already gotten my card working. madwifi didn't work for me, or i wasn't installing it right, but that list was from my terminal, and was a listing of everything wrapped in ndiswrapper at that point. my purpose in putting the list was to rase the question about the supplied driver for the card being listed as "invalid".tempestuous wrote:Better still, do as I previously suggested and avoid ndiswrapper altogether. MADWiFi is a true Linux driver.
BTW i have not bothered to remove any of those drivers, what is working will not be tampered with till i'm more comfortable with my skills (which are small but growing).
Open Hardware
Open hardware is the future. All someone needs to do is to design some royalty-free chipset, someone else write some royalty-free gpl drivers and we're cooking with gas! It makes no sense to design something new when its already freely available. Hardware manufacturers will compete to build it as cheap as possible. People can even improve the design of either part, obviously maintaining backwards compatibility. Everyones a winner!
I have also had many frustrations getting wireless to work with Linux.
Having one or two 'known to work out of the box' wireless cards would be a tremendous boost for Puppy.
The choice is always going to be hard, but I would go for a USB dongle, available World Wide. D-Link has been mentioned earlier & seems reasonable to me.
Another obvious choice is the Centrino WiFi, pretty common in many lap tops now.
I've mentioned elsewhere, on this forum and DSL, that I believe the lack of working wireless solutions is a very major drawback to the uptake of Linux - we need to solve it. Can Puppy lead the way?
Having one or two 'known to work out of the box' wireless cards would be a tremendous boost for Puppy.
The choice is always going to be hard, but I would go for a USB dongle, available World Wide. D-Link has been mentioned earlier & seems reasonable to me.
Another obvious choice is the Centrino WiFi, pretty common in many lap tops now.
I've mentioned elsewhere, on this forum and DSL, that I believe the lack of working wireless solutions is a very major drawback to the uptake of Linux - we need to solve it. Can Puppy lead the way?
I have two 802.11g PCMCIA cards that work well with Puppy using the drivers generously made available by tempestuous. They both contain the Ralink RT2500 chips and I believe, having checked the net - but can't garantee, that they only use those chips. The cards are:iang wrote: Having one or two 'known to work out of the box' wireless cards would be a tremendous boost for Puppy.
Gigabyte GN-WMKG
Zonet ZEW1501
I have come to the same conclusion, that the USB dongle approach is more universal. I have ordered this USB wireless dongle because the manufacturer took the trouble to advertise linux (and Mac too) compatibility, suggesting they may care more about serving our needs (e.g. not changing chipsets willy-nilly) than a more Windows-intended product would. Maybe even supply a driver!
However it was sold out at all vendors for a while (hey, maybe they have tapped an unknown need!
) and then I moved, sort of, so I don't know if it is sitting in a box at my other house. When I get my hands on it I will try to get it running. Maybe this is the one we are looking for...
However it was sold out at all vendors for a while (hey, maybe they have tapped an unknown need!
) and then I moved, sort of, so I don't know if it is sitting in a box at my other house. When I get my hands on it I will try to get it running. Maybe this is the one we are looking for...
Paul,
This thread has been inactive for a couple months, but I wanted to check back and see if you had been able to get that USB dongle working with Puppy. I'm refurbishing an old computer for a friend. Puppy is already installed, but a buddy and I have been unable to get the D-Link PCI Wifi adapter working at all under Puppy. Looking for a cheap alternative that's known to work.
Your initial post in this thread contained a great idea. Hardware compatibility always seems to be the biggest kicker for Linux no matter what distro you're using, and is the problem most likely to make me give up with one distro and go try another. I now choose the peripherals I buy based on the availability of Linux drivers and known compatibility with my favored distros.
I agree that officially supporting a specific wifi card in Puppy could give the distro a much wider appeal, particularly to non-geeks who are tired of The Great Satan OS and just want something simple, secure, and fast.
For some time now I've been meaning to suggest a sticky thread or even a wiki that would list recommended makes & models of all common peripherals based on known out-of-the-box compatibility with Puppy.
There's already a list of sorts for wifi cards (http://puppylinux.org/wikka/WirelessWorking), although it doesn't highlight the ones that work out-of-the-box sans ndiswrapper or any other special configuration. Ideally the "recommended" list would include only wifi cards that can be set up using Puppy's Wireless Network Wizard without having to download and install a special driver.
This thread has been inactive for a couple months, but I wanted to check back and see if you had been able to get that USB dongle working with Puppy. I'm refurbishing an old computer for a friend. Puppy is already installed, but a buddy and I have been unable to get the D-Link PCI Wifi adapter working at all under Puppy. Looking for a cheap alternative that's known to work.
Your initial post in this thread contained a great idea. Hardware compatibility always seems to be the biggest kicker for Linux no matter what distro you're using, and is the problem most likely to make me give up with one distro and go try another. I now choose the peripherals I buy based on the availability of Linux drivers and known compatibility with my favored distros.
I agree that officially supporting a specific wifi card in Puppy could give the distro a much wider appeal, particularly to non-geeks who are tired of The Great Satan OS and just want something simple, secure, and fast.
For some time now I've been meaning to suggest a sticky thread or even a wiki that would list recommended makes & models of all common peripherals based on known out-of-the-box compatibility with Puppy.
There's already a list of sorts for wifi cards (http://puppylinux.org/wikka/WirelessWorking), although it doesn't highlight the ones that work out-of-the-box sans ndiswrapper or any other special configuration. Ideally the "recommended" list would include only wifi cards that can be set up using Puppy's Wireless Network Wizard without having to download and install a special driver.
