Knoppix on Amilo D CY-26 and Netgear WG511 PCMCIA

[shodanjr_gr]

Hey guys,

i have been trying for a while to find a linux distro that manages to recognise most of my laptop's hardware without much hassle. (I got an Amilo D (Compal Cy-26) with Athlon Mobile 1600+, 256 mb ram, Radeon IGP).

I also got a Netgear WG511 wireless lan card (the one thats made in China).

Knoppix has been succesfull in autodetecting all of my laptops hardware, apart from the Wireless PCMCIA card.

Anyone got any clues on getting the bloody thing to work? No distro that ive tried so far has been able to autodetect the damn thing.

Id appreciate step by step instructions since i am new to the whole Linux world :)

If i manage to fix this thing, knoppix is heading str8 for my laptop's harddrive :)

Thanks b4hand all!!!!!

[Harry Kuhman]

If i manage to fix this thing, knoppix is heading str8 for my laptop's harddrive
And you think that would encourage us to help you get the wifi card working??????

But as to your question, saddly many wifi cards are not well supported in Linux, let alone Knoppix. We have a modest wifi section in the wiki, but not many people have made contributions to it (before you take that as a real bad sign realize that wiki contributions have been light over all, other than the spammers who we have to keep deleting and banning). A few cards are supported directly in Knoppix. Some more can be sorta forced to work with ndiswrapper software (see the wiki for details). Some don't work at all. If your manufacturer does offer Linux drivers for the card but they are not in Knoppix, I would suggest that you considering installing Debian rather than Knoppix to the hard disk. Then you should be able to safely install the wifi drivers, as well as install anything else that Knoppix includes (and plenty more). Knoppix is not well suited to installing additional software and drivers once "installed" to a hard disk.

[shodanjr_gr]

First of all thank you for the speedy reply.

I understand that the wireless situation with linux can be a pickle-of-a-didly-ickle as Ned Flanders would say but i would really like to get this sorted out.

In case im not able to fix my current PCMCIA card, could you suggest another model that would be easy to get working with Debian and/or Knoppix???? (a link to buy the thing from would be nice as well, although they must be able to ship it to Greece :) )

[Harry Kuhman]

, could you suggest another model that would be easy to get working with Debian and/or Knoppix????
Sadly I can't. That is, I'm not comfortable recommending any card because many manufacturers have a bad habit of changing the chips used in their cards but not changing the card model number. For example Dlink had made many different versions of their DL-650 card. Some are said to work with Knoppix; neither of the two that I have do. You can check the wiki for more information, but I think it will come down to seeing what you can buy locally and then researching what can be found out about the products. And a store with a good return policy or who will at least let you try the card there before buying it might be a lot more important than the lowest price. Oh, and 802.11b support seems to be better than support for new faster cards. And an install-friendly version of Linux that you can add a driver to, if the driver is available, would give you a better chance of sucess than a live CD.