Regarding the TL-WN821N, some variants use the same driver as mine (ath9k_htc), while some use the carl9170 driver. For the latter, you need firmware that is not in the linux-firmware package. Get it here and put it in /usr/lib/firmware.
]]>I guess I'll go buy one off amazon and see if it works.
Sorry for needing help so in-depth and thanks again!
]]>Bypassing pacman by manually installing software is discouraged as it can lead to a large number of problems. The .pkg.tar.xz is a pre-made arch-ready package that can quickly and easily be installed by pacman. This will avoid many problems while also ensuring everything is installed in the proper place for an arch linux system.
I do not have any experience with ndiswrapper - so if it is a viable solution I would certainly agree with Gusar that you should opt for a different device. If, however, this is not a very practical solution and you want to try ndiswrapper then first see if you can get wired internet access - at lest temporarily - and install ndiswrapper with
pacman -Syu ndiswrapper
If you cannot get wired internet at all, then go to the link below, choose the appropriate architecture, then click the link to "download from mirror" and get the .pkg.tar.xz file. Put that file on a flash drive, move it to your installation machine, then run the pacman command mentioned above which would be something like:
pacman -U /path/to/ndiswrapper-1.57-25-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz
A question to Gusar. What are you suggesting will be a consequence for this adapter having no native linux driver?
ndiswrapper is a hack. It might work. But it also might cause kernel panics, or the connection might drop every few minutes and such stuff. It's simply not stable. Get a TP-Link device, they use Atheros chipsets which work great in Linux.
]]>If you don't have (and can't get) access to wired internet for the install then you can download the pkg.tar.xz from an archlinux mirror , put it on a flash drive, then install it in arch with "pacman -U path/to/flashdrive/filename.pkg.tar.xz"
]]>I have indeed looked at this page https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wireless_Setup
and then checked
-->http://www.linuxquestions.org/hcl/showcat.php/cat/149/page/1/sort/1/perpage/15/stype/
-->https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HardwareSupportComponentsWirelessNetworkCardsNetgear
-->http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Devices/USB
and for the most part could not find the model number of my adapter.
as well when I tried to do the setup for wireless
with wpa_passphrase "SSID" "password" >/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
wpa_supplicant -Dwext -iwlan0 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf & >/dev/null
dhcpcd wlan0
(as was instructed by an installation tutorial I was watching on youtube)
it didn't work and the installation terminal was left in some sort of text editing state where commands didn't do anything.
So I decided afterwards it was safe to assume that ArchLinux probably doesn't support my specific usb wireless adapter.
(which yet again is NetGear N-300 WNA3100)
So I would greatly appreciate any help at all!
I'm willing to buy a different model adapter if that will get my installation to work but I would first like to try to find a way to install this adapter on ArchLinux if that is possible.
Thank you for your patience!!