I plan to install Puppy on an old desktop that will live upstairs. I have an 802.11b router downstairs and I would like to connect to it using a wireless adaptor. The machine does not currently have a wireless adaptor. I am a Linux newbie, so I would like to find the easiest out-of-the-box solution that I can. I have seen lists of compatible cards on the Puppy wiki and various Linux hardware lists, but some devices seem much more difficult than others to get working.
What is the easiest (and relatively inexpensive) 802.11b compatible wireless PCI card or USB adaptor solution that would work with Puppy?
Easiest Desktop Wireless Card/Adaptor
In my experience, the absolute easiest is a wireless access point that you connect to the PC with a LAN cable. Puppy connects to it via eth0 and you don't have to worry about wireless drivers for PCI or USB cards. I use a D-Link DWL900AP+ & it works perfectly with minimal setup (exactly the same settings as for Windows). You configure all the settings via a web browser interface, so it's completely operating system independant. You can see it here as I wrote up a short description of my Linux PC for the Puppy mediafest: http://ian.greenshields.googlepages.com/
The Wiki is a good starting point for cards that work, but be prepared to have to mess around. Also be aware that 'works out of the box' and 'easy to configure' has different meanings depending on the user's skill level.
There's a lot of information also on these forums, so some time spent searching may save hours in the long run. For many wireless cards, the secret is in the chipset. Some are well supported under Linux, others not at all.
There's a thread running under the 'suggestions' or 'misc' forum (I forget which) which proposes Puppy pick a common wireless card and include the configuration in the standard Puppy distro so it really does work out of the box - this may be a good place to resurrect the idea!
The Wiki is a good starting point for cards that work, but be prepared to have to mess around. Also be aware that 'works out of the box' and 'easy to configure' has different meanings depending on the user's skill level.
There's a lot of information also on these forums, so some time spent searching may save hours in the long run. For many wireless cards, the secret is in the chipset. Some are well supported under Linux, others not at all.
There's a thread running under the 'suggestions' or 'misc' forum (I forget which) which proposes Puppy pick a common wireless card and include the configuration in the standard Puppy distro so it really does work out of the box - this may be a good place to resurrect the idea!
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marksouth2000
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- Joined: Wed 05 Apr 2006, 20:43
Ian, as you say, the secret is in the chipset. Many manufacturers change chipsets at random, some don't even seem to know themselves what is in their cards(!)iang wrote:For many wireless cards, the secret is in the chipset. Some are well supported under Linux, others not at all.
There's a thread running under the 'suggestions' or 'misc' forum (I forget which) which proposes Puppy pick a common wireless card and include the configuration in the standard Puppy distro so it really does work out of the box - this may be a good place to resurrect the idea!
If you can find a genuine Prism-based card, they do work out-of-the-box in Puppy 2.xx with only a few clicks: Connect | Wireless | Run WAG | Profiles | Autoconnect does it in Puppy 2.02 for example.
Check out this post:
http://www.murga.org/%7Epuppy/viewtopic.php?t=10236
Maybe someone can sticky that one.
http://www.murga.org/%7Epuppy/viewtopic.php?t=10236
Maybe someone can sticky that one.
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Pizzasgood
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- Joined: Wed 04 May 2005, 20:28
- Location: Knoxville, TN, USA
I don't know if it warrants stickiness (probably outside my authority anyway), but I added it to Flash's "Index of resources for Beginners" sticky.
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I have a netgear wg311v3 pci card and also a pcmcia card of the same model. both work flawlessly with ndiswrappwer on every linux I have tried, and take only a few minutes to set up - the instructions in the puppy wireless 'wizard' make it fool-proof. also they were dirt cheap off ebay (around AUD$20)
i reckon it would be hard to find easier than that - the windows setup for these cards is significantly more complicated, if you ask me they work better and are easier to set up in linux.
i reckon it would be hard to find easier than that - the windows setup for these cards is significantly more complicated, if you ask me they work better and are easier to set up in linux.
i also just read another post about the wg511v3 - the author had some trouble installing it with puppy, but the second post stated it was a user error and the card worked fine.
I think it might help to have a post with a listing of all the wifi cards confirmed to work in puppy.
i might just do that now I think...
I think it might help to have a post with a listing of all the wifi cards confirmed to work in puppy.
i might just do that now I think...