[CentOS] Which external WiFi device for laptop running CentOS 5.3?

fred smith fredex at fcshome.stoneham.ma.us
Fri Jun 19 18:31:33 UTC 2009


On Fri, Jun 19, 2009 at 08:28:49AM -0400, Robert Moskowitz wrote:
> David McGuffey wrote:
> > Have decided to give up on the embedded Broadcom 4312 wireless device in
> > my son's Dell laptop.  I get WEP open authentication to work, but
> > nothing else.  I was about to dump the bcm43xx kernel module and the
> > bcm43xx-microcode5.fw firmware and work with the newer b43 module and
> > associated firmware.  However, he claims that at school, he has always
> > had intermittent problems with wireless under Vista and wants an
> > external device (USB or PCMCIA). 
> >   
> 
> For USB, you will almost for sure have to use the NDIS wrapper driver. I 
> have not tried it, been shying away from it for at least a year now. I 
> believe it is built into FC11, so will be part of Centos 6 at some date 
> off in the future ;)

I was recently snooping around on amazon and newegg looking at wireless
cards for desktop machines. I was specifically reading customer reviews
that mentioned Linux. There were a number of them that reportedly worked
on Linux, and most of them used an (older, I think) ralink chipset that
appars to have drivers on Centos 5 (at least there is a kernel module
by that name) and which the reviewers said that it "just worked".

Most of the ones I was looking at were PCI cards, which won't help you 
if you're looking for something for a laptop, but I also recall seeing
some USB models that also claimed to work on linux.

Good luck!

 
> PCMCIA or miniPCI is more promising. You can use the DKMS driver (?) for 
> say madwifi, and be quite satisfied with the results.
> 
> You say that the current wifi is 'builtin'. Is that on the board or a 
> miniPCI? If the later, pull it out and put in something supported.
> 
> > So...if you had a clean slate, which make & model would you buy for
> > mindlessly easy installation and use under CentOS 5.3?
> >
> > Dave
> >
> >
> >
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> >
> >   
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-- 
---- Fred Smith -- fredex at fcshome.stoneham.ma.us -----------------------------
                       I can do all things through Christ 
                              who strengthens me.
------------------------------ Philippians 4:13 -------------------------------
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