[TriLUG] wireless cards with linux

[Ed Hill]

On Tue, 2002-04-02 at 15:06, Geoff Purdy wrote:
> > Working on a project for a non-profit, wondering if anyone 
> > can recommend the
> > best wireless card for use with linux? 
> 
> I asked a similar question on the list a few weeks ago.  The consensus
> seemed to be Lucent/Agere Orinoco.  I bought one based on TriLUG's
> recommendation and it works great.


Hi Brian,

Don't count out the recent (and inexpensive!) Prism-II based cards such
as:

        Addtron AWP-100
	D-Link DWL-650, DRC-650
	Linksys WPC11
	Netgear MA401

I have two of the cheap-o ($50) Addtron cards and, in my experience,
they work very nicely with Red Hat 7.2 and current Mandrake and SuSE
distros.

At a recent Hacking Society (http://www.hackingsociety.com/) get-
together, we swapped cards around at a 802.11-equipped coffee house. 
Believe it or not, the cheap-o Prism-II based cards were the *easiest*
to get working on a few IBM Thinkpads, Dells, and a Toshiba.  As a
counter-point, one old Orinoco refused to work on my ThinkPad (RH 7.2)
and on a Dell while all the Prism-II cards (Linksys, Netgear, &
Addtrons) ran without any tweaking.

As always, YMMV.

hth,
Ed


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Edward H. Hill III, PhD
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