GettingWirelessToWork

Hey, in case anyone is having trouble getting wireless to work, I'd like to report how things went for me. I have a couple of laptops. One is newer and the other I got on Ebay for hacking things like the Hurd and doing dangerous things that I didn't want to risk on my main laptop. My older laptop never had wireless but I recently got a card. The Free Software Foundation has a page that lists hardware devices that work with free software here: http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw

I found this: Asus WL-107G PCMCIA card

I went ahead and bought it and I have to mention that I couldn't get it to work in Debian. I didn't really want to use Debian anyway but that's what I had on it at the time. Anyway, I installed gNewSense and sure enough, it worked! I wanted to be sure so I went through the ubuntu-linux-modules update and of course all the other updates and after a couple of reboots it remained functional. I got it for under $40 and I advise anyone having trouble with wireless if they have a PCMCIA slot to try this card or another one listed on the FSF hardware page.

My new laptop won't work because the wireless in it is Broadcom. Unfortunately I thought it had a PCMCIA slot too but it turned out to actually be something called an ExpressCard slot. So I'll have to return the 2nd one I got (oops) and I've ordered the DWA-643 Xtreme N ExpressCard Notebook Adapter. This was a little more expensive but assuming I use it for a long time, it's worth it. I'll be getting that in the next couple of days and when I do, I'll report on how it went. My newer laptop already has gNewSense installed.

Wow thanks for this information. Please let me know how the express card goes. I am currently (sadly) using ubuntu "Free Software Only" install until I find a solution to my wireless problem. If that express card works out I will be using Gnewsense!!!

Well, I got the card but when I tried fitting in the slot, it wouldn't fit nicely. It fits so that it won't come out right away but it will move side to side. The slot is the size of a PCMCIA slot and narrows further down so it definitely fits into a narrow section on the left of the slot but it doesn't seem to fit right. Maybe it's just loose but I don't know. Whatever the problem is, I haven't been able to get it to work. Looking online got me nowhere as it seems that one distribution is claimed to have supported the ath9k but git couldn't find the "temporary git repository" so I couldn't even try anything there. I have a feeling it would work out of the box but something else is wrong with size/format or something stupid like that. I might be out $80 for nothing if I don't figure something out :-(

did it not fit because of your express slot? or does it not fit because the card is crap??? I am really considering getting one but maybe I should look for something else.

Well, I'm not sure. You see, an ExpressCard slot seems to be thin but my slot is the shape of a PCMCIA card and the ExpressCard gets guided into the left side of the slot and definitely fits into something. But part of it still sticks out and it seems loose. It seems like it's more than just shoved in there; clearly it's meant to go there, but somehow it doesn't seem right. Because I have heard of laptops doing crazy things like requiring certain hardware to function, I wonder if it's just an incompatibility of my laptop.

I think I'm giving up on free wireless for that one, for now. :-( I'll just have to consider it crippled by incompatible hardware and if I can use an ethernet cable, then it'll be the better one but if wireless is a must then my older one, slow as it may be, will be the primary one. Maybe something will change. In the meantime, I know that my next purchase of a laptop will fully take into account what hardware works with free software.

yeah I know what you mean. I wish I had known what I did now when I bought this laptop. Right now I am running an Ethernet cable across my house to get internet from my router. it's a temporary solution for the time being.