On Wed, 12 Jul 2006, bruce wrote:
-----Original Message-----
From: fedora-list-bounces@xxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:fedora-list-bounces@xxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Jeff Vian
Sent: Wednesday, July 12, 2006 8:19 AM
To: For users of Fedora Core releases
Subject: Re: Wireless PCMCIA
On Wed, 2006-07-12 at 08:02 +1000, contact51 wrote:
Such a dissapointment.
Over the recent weeks I have really put in the hours getting to grips
with Linux by way of Fedora, having progressed from FC3-4 and now FC5.
Being more than satisfied with results until now. Big problem.
I went and bought a PCMCIA card for my laptop hoping to be able to use
it.
My HDD is divided into two - Windows XP and Fedora 5.
It took probably about 2 minutes to install the card, up and running
under XP.
Some six hours later, after reading through numerous internet
descriptions on how one might install such a device, downloading and
installing gigabytes of files, wrappers etc. etc... still nothing!
Eventually giving up in despair I decided that some of my original
fears about Linux have to be correct. It is just a muddle of half
cooked amateur computer files cobbled together to resemmble an OS that
probably performs somewhere at about 60% compared to that of Bill
Gates' Windows.
LOL. What a whiner!
If you have been watching this list, and doing any sort of research, you
would have known that Linux can use certain brands of wireless cards
natively (mainly those with the atheros chipset) and others have to be
run by using ndiswrapper to enable use of the windows drivers for the
card (broadcom, etc).
It may not be a wireless chipset issue.
If the device does not show up with an "lspci" command then it is a
different issue.
It might be a cardbus card. If you add "pci=assign-busses" to the kernel
line in /etc/grub.conf and reboot, it usually fixes this problem.
Wireless support is problematic due to the binary firmware for the
chipsets. Since these do not have source, vendors are not willing to
distribute them.
It is harder than it should be. But it is not impossible. All it takes
is a bit of research and not buying the cheapest piece of crap at Fry's.
--
"I want to live just long enough to see them cut off Darl's head and
stick it on a pike as a reminder to the next ten generations that some
things come at too high a price. I would look up into his beady eyes and
wave, like this... (*wave*!). Can your associates arrange that for me,
Mr. McBride?"
- Vir "Flounder" Kotto, Sr. VP, IBM Empire.
