[SWLUG] WiFi & Linux

Emmanuel Durand erdurand at gmail.com
Fri May 18 08:46:20 UTC 2007


Dear Justin

Do you have to go all wifi? It is true that it is nice to be able to work
from anywhere i the house, but for a desktop is it necessary? Wifi is slower
than ethernet, and it is less secure, whatever protection you have. It can
also be difficult to set up sometimes. And as the other have said, not many
devices have got native linux support. If you have a desktop, and it is far
from the phone socket, just put an extension.

Emmanuel

2007/5/18, Justin Mitchell <justin at discordia.org.uk>:
>
> On Fri, 2007-05-18 at 00:02 +0100, Phillip Evans wrote:
> > Hi All,
> >
> > I am going wifi in the not too distant future and would appreciate any
> > comments on setting this up with Linux. I am currently using Mandriva
> > 2007 with no immediate intentions to change.
> >
> > I have set up several wifi networks for friends using windoze which has
> > not been a major problem but how easy is this with Linux ? Do I need to
> > use ndiswrapper and how easy (difficult ?) is this to setup & configure
> > ? I am intending to use routers and wireless adaptors from either
> > Netgear or Belkin and would appreciate any comments on what is the best
> > kit to use, any obvious banana skins to avoid etc.
>
> if your going to fit adaptor cards / usb to machines directly then
> afaics the only commonly found modern devices with native support are
> ralink and aetheros
> http://www.ralinktech.com/ralink/Home/Support/Linux.html
> http://madwifi.org/
>
> it can be very hard to know what chipset is on a card before you buy it,
> the manufacturers never seem keen to tell you, and some even change the
> chipset without changing the model number, making it real guesswork.
>
> ive pretty much given up putting cards in individual machines and just
> use access points and bridges to create the network, you then dont have
> to worry about drivers as its just ethernet.
>
>
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