I've been running a dual boot of XP and MINT Elyssa, since the latters realease, and i'm thinking of doing a full switch to MINT, but i can't seem to get my wireless USB key to be recognized. Its a WG111T NETGEAR, and they don't do a Linux driver. I know the only way to get it working is to hack the Linux kernel to use the windows drivers, so i was wondering is there any easy way to do this? and a temporary hardwiring isn't an option here.
You should be using NDISwrapper for your Linux wireless needs: http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/joomla/
eehhhhh duh Check on your sources before posting Jasio, you think i haven't tried that already? lemme break it down for you: MINT Elyssa = debian based, ndiswrapper = not debian based see how that works? you do? well thats amazing, cause i don't!
<sarcasm> You're right... my bad... there are only 39 packages with ndiswrapper for Debian (http://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=ndiswrapper)... how silly of me! </sarcasm> Don't blame me for your choice of a poor distro. I much rather prefer Gentoo and SuSE which worked with my wireless NIC on my laptop out of the box. Of course, you can stop being lazy, RTFM and compile from source. (A manual is conveniently placed on the NDISwrapper website).
My suggestion would be not to fiddle around with ndiswrapper and non-free drivers, and get a card supported by the free ath5k driver.
Check on your sources before posting subterrian. A quick google shows that its included by default, but i agree with fophillips a card with native drivers can be worth it just to cutdown on the headaches
Especially since the aforementioned ath5k driver is now in the kernel (2.6.27), which means my EeePC wifi now works "out of the box" on Ubuntu 8.10a4.
In kernel wireless drivers are great, using the iwl3945 driver myself, just had to select a couple of things for that and compile the microcode to get it running on gentoo
Theres also fw cutter and the widows driver installer using ndis as the backend. But then again wireless in a pain so if you get it working good for you.
It's more dependent on the type of NIC you have. For example, I haven't had any issues getting Broadcom or Intel wireless NIC's to work (especially Intel). It's just luck of draw, or if you have a desktop, choose a NIC that has better support. Of course, you can always buy a better supported NIC for your laptop (or check its specs ahead of time).
ndiswrapper isn't anything to do with Debian. Yes, this is precisely the function of ndiswrapper. NDIS = Network Driver Interface Specification, MS' API for NIC drivers. Assuming you have drivername.inf and the associated .sys file in the current directory, it's hopefully just a case of # ndiswrapper -i drivername.inf # modprobe ndiswrapper # reboot Hopefully it reboots with the ndiswrapper kernel module loaded and the relevant driver installed based on what hardware was detected. Also add "ndiswrapper" to /etc/modules or your distro's equivalent, if it isn't there. Finally you may have to blacklist any other modules which tell the kernel "Oh, I can run that chip!" but cant.) Mint apparently has ndiswrapper installed by default
