WiFi Internet
Dan
grinnz at gmail.com
Sun May 14 09:09:08 UTC 2006
Karl Larsen wrote:
> Gene Heskett wrote:
>> Karl Larsen wrote:
>>> I have not kept up. Do any of the Fedora Core versions even try
>>> to have a WiFi setup? My laptop has Windows XP and a built in Wi Fi
>>> device. I think the problem has been that no Linux person can get
>>> details on the things.
>>>
>>> Of course it works fine with windows.
>>>
>>> Karl
>>>
>> It depends somewhat on the chipset in the laptops radio. This HP has
>> a broadcom bcm4318 radio in it, and this chip requires ndiswrapper
>> and the windows drivers borrowed directly from the XP partition. Its
>> been hell to make it work, but its now working quite well, and
>> without using NetworkManager because I'm running KDE, its started by
>> the usual network script in /etc/rc.d/init.d at startup for me. This
>> is not how its supposed to work I keep being told. But it does...
>>
>> If you are running gnome, the instructions at
>> <http://www.redhat.com/magazine/003jan05/features/networkmanager/>
>> should get you at least into the right ballpark.
>>
>> There is, we're told, some progress on a reverse engineered kernel
>> module to drive this family of chips, but getting info on how to
>> setup this driver is a bit like finding a lifetime supply of hens
>> teeth. Those were, and still are AFAIK, apparently made out of pure
>> unobtainium. Of course someone closer to the progress of that driver
>> than I obviously am, may chime right in and correct me. If you are
>> keeping the box up2date with yum or yumex, then the latest kernels
>> actually have this module in them already, and it may be that it can
>> work if thats your chipset.
>>
>> Otherwise post your lspci output so we can see what chipset the radio
>> is.
>>
> Otherwise, the answer is:Fedora Core has no wifi but if your a
> graduate IT you might get it to work. I have heard of the Windows DLL
> with some kind of wrapper software. Geeze!
>
> Karl
>
Not necessarily. If you have an Intel PRO/Wireless 2100 or 2200/2915
wireless card (most "centrino" laptops) you can just install
ipw2100-firmware or ipw2200-firmware from livna. If you have a card with
an atheros chipset, you can install madwifi (and the appropriate kmod)
from livna. Broadcom chipsets supposedly have support in the kernel, I
don't know anything about that. Anything else that isn't supported in
the kernel, you probably have to download ndiswrapper (+kmod) from
livna, and set that up with the windows DLL. Whatever way, if you're
running GNOME, you can then enable the
NetworkManager/NetworkManagerDispatcher services for runlevel 5 in
system-config-services, and you should be set for WiFi-ing.
NetworkManager does seem to not like some wireless cards at the moment,
though, unfortunately; my ipw2915 card works fine though.
-Dan
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