Linux wifi (was: CD-ROM woes)

[Tormod]

Venting....venting...venting...

 

I just spent an eternity downloading a kubuntu live iso and burning it to CD-ROM, only to find out that my lappy's CD-ROM drive is unable to read the CD it just burned. I have a couple of new coaster now if anyone's interested. :rainbow:

 

I can put the CD in my desktop and it reads allright so I know it was written correctly.

 

MY lappy is a Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo D-8820, and the CDRW/DVD player is a QSI CDRW/DVD SBW-241.

 

Anu ideas what I can do? Do I need to buy another batch of CD-Rs or do I just give up?

 

Is it possible to install Kubuntu from the harddrive...?

[Tormod]

I tried it again on a different brand media...no luck. My CDRW must be broken. :rainbow:

[Tormod]

Hehe...although I have a Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo lappy I could use a firmware from HP which resolved the problem. :rainbow: (Note to self: Fujitsu-Siemens forums *suck*...there's absolutely no support available).

 

Burnt and installed Kubuntu 3.10. It looks really slick! Just the thing to get a Win guy like myself to jump onto the Linux bandwagon, perhaps.

 

But my NIC isn't responding. Must...research...when...I...wake...up...a lappy without net access is like, uhm, a TV without a picture. :rainbow:

[Tormod]

Heh...had to take out my D-Link AirPlus G+ 54Mbps NIC and insert my old 11b NIC...and do some iwconfig magic I found over at the kubuntu forums.

 

Posting this from my kubuntu lappy. :rainbow:

 

It's just a live distro for testing but this is really working swell. Excellent interface...plus it found my screen resolution instantly (1440xsomething).

[alexander]

what model dlink is it?

 

first of all, BIG news, 802.11n got approved by the IEEE a few days ago, standard running on prototypes support speeds of 600Mbps and a larger range for wireless.

 

and now on Linux's support of wireless cards:

the problem with any kind of a new card is the chipset: where most new cards thrive on older technology, some come out with new chips, which means that they would have to be reverse engineered to work. Yes it is true that linux supports more networking technology then windows because its drivers are not card speciffic and instead support chipsets, so hence any card that runs an atheros chipset is supported, even new cards, if they come out with an atheros chipset will automagically be usable on Linux with no new driver of any sort, such is the case for IBM, Cisco cards and so forth. The problem then is what happens when chipsets that are not all that widely spread, go to the market. Well, this is where linux, due to it's less popularity falls behind, as sad as it is... The problem is that most (around 90%) of hardware manufacturers do not like to share their hardware speciffications with any outside company that will be writing an open driver for their hardware. Drivers are those little things that can reveal exactly how hardware operates, giving an edge for competitors who are willing to read the code. So most of Linux drivers are reverse engineered, yes, ATI and NVidia drivers, Cisco drivers, Atheros and Asus drivers, heck, Mips architecture support if I'm not mistaken, all the mobile processor support, PowerPC support, Ipod, and all kinds of protocols all needed and still need to be reverse engineered. What comes first? well, what is in demand ofcourse, ATI people and NVidia people all want an equal share of graphics support, so those drivers (not general vga display, talking about 3d accel drivers) get bunches of people reverse engineering, and making the drivers more efficient, people trying to support newer chipsets and so forth doing the work, leaving things like certain less used wireless chipsets unsupported. So, whenever bying or using a device on Linux, always first check how well supported it is, chances are if there is very little info on it on the net, it lacks support and most likely can not be easily used in Linux... so, if you could gimme the exact model number of your card, or you could do this yourself, find out what chipset it uses, and i'll help you eiter confirm that you are better off with that other card, or advise you on the driver to install....

 

Also, if you can install pciutils and run lspci -v we could get your onboard nick up and running in no time :rainbow:

[Tormod]

Cool. I've downloaded the install version and hope to find some time to install it today. I'll do the installation with my 11b nic so the installation can set up wifi for me, then we can see if we can get the D-link one to work afterwards.

 

The exact info on the card is:

 

D-link AirPlus G+

Model: DWL-G650+

[alexander]

well, its all in the revision letter T.... the easiest way to find out what chipset it is, is if you put the card in, you see the thing light up hopefully then you open up a terminal, do sudo lspci -v and look for the dlink card, and specifically look for the chipset..... but we can come back to that a bit later :lol:

[Tormod]

The card never lights up, but it's found by lspci.

 

Here's the info at the back of the card:

 

P/N: EWLG650+EUB1

S/N: EA01159002861

 

Here is the lspci -v output:

 

0000:06:00.0 Network controller: Texas Instruments ACX 111 54Mbps Wireless Interface

Subsystem: D-Link System Inc: Unknown device 3b05

Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 11

Memory at 21020000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable)

Memory at 21000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable)

Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 2

[Tormod]

Some additional info from the back of the card:

 

H/W: B1

F/W: 2.04

[alexander]

ooh, TI chipset is not good, you can only hope to run your card using ndis wrapper, other then that, it is a proprietary card with a closed-source driver, so there is a little over 0 support for it.... sry.... but it may work through ndis wrapper with a windows driver :lol:

[Tormod]

Okay...it's all Greek to me but I will read up on ndis wrappers. I prefer taco myself. :(