Arch Linux

Jacek Poplawski

Member

From: Poland

Registered: 2006-01-10

Posts: 736

Website

Which PCI WLAN should I buy?

Could you recommend PCI WLAN card which works correctly in Arch without installing any other drivers?

I know that there are some official and unofficial projects to create drivers for Realtek WLAN for example, but I want to avoid it. I want to buy 3 cards for my home and I need them to be supported by kernel itself, or at least by Arch.

STiAT

Member

From: Vienna, Austria

Registered: 2004-12-23

Posts: 606

Re: Which PCI WLAN should I buy?

Well, that often depends down to revision of several cards.
I'd try to get a prism54 chipset, since the drivers are officially in the kernel. You will need to ask the redistributors what chipset is actually on the card, or which revision they're selling, and try to find information about them on the web.
That's not too easy.

Most current cards are wifi-based, at least in europe as it seems.
I personally use a wifi based card, in combination with madwifi drivers.
I want to remind you that there's nothing wrong about wifi drivers, or drivers provided in seperate packages, if they're provided by arch in the current tree, they have been released as stable by their distributors. The only hassle is if you ever setup your system from the scratch, you'll need to connect by cable once, or you need to download the wifi package for the system version you're running, what often ends up in installing ~2-5 packages.

I simply always connect by cable once installing a wireless computer in my flat, update the system, edit the needed files, install the wifi-driver, configure it and there i go.
Not too much hassle, though, some more than with prism cards.

// STi

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Jacek Poplawski

Member

From: Poland

Registered: 2006-01-10

Posts: 736

Website

Re: Which PCI WLAN should I buy?

Like this one?

3Com 3CRDW696 OEM, karta PCI 802.11b 11Mbps, chipset PRISM 2.5, moc 18 dBi

(karta==card, moc==power)

STiAT

Member

From: Vienna, Austria

Registered: 2004-12-23

Posts: 606

Re: Which PCI WLAN should I buy?

According to the developers of prism54.org, all current prism chipsets (2, 2.5, 3) are supported and work with the driver.

So yes, indeed, the card you posted should work. I just want to ensure you know it's a 11mbps card.

Currently the developer is doing some work on fullmac cards and softmac devices.

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Ability is nothing without opportunity.

Jacek Poplawski

Member

From: Poland

Registered: 2006-01-10

Posts: 736

Website

Re: Which PCI WLAN should I buy?

Do you mean that I should try to find faster model than 11Mbps?

dimi

Member

Registered: 2005-12-04

Posts: 15

Re: Which PCI WLAN should I buy?

Well, that depends on your router and your needs.
Make sure to read some customer reviews on Amazon or something similiar before you make the buy.

I recently bought a Netgear WG311T, and it works great (Atheros Chipset).