Working USB wifi dongle?

[kirol]

Can anyone recommend a USB wireless dongle which would work with knoppix (or kanotix) ? I'd be also interested in advice regarding a PCI wireless card, but somehow the combination of CD+dongle strikes me as very portable....

[Harry Kuhman]

Wifi is not well supported in Linux, many makers refuse to even release specs that would let Linux developers write drivers. Of the drivers that are released some are so bloated that they are nearly worthless (I saw one supposed sifi driver that was about 30 meg in size, no source code available - how many drivers like this do you think can or should be included in Knoppix or any live CD?). Even when you find a card make and model that works you have to be very careful when you make a purchase, since many tomes manufacturers change the hardware down to the chipset level but keep the same model number for the card. In effect they have produced a completely different card but the model number stays the same, just a new "version number" or some other label marking indicates which true model you have. Look at the many versions of the Dlink DWL-650 for just one example (and see how few have Linux support available).

The situation with USB wifi interfaces is even worse. While all of the above is true, there are a few more factors, including that USB devices require another level of device driver (just one more thing that the manufacturers are not likely to provide for Linux) and that USB is a really awful technology for networking in the first place and will limit your throughput and really burn through available CPU cycles when used in networking.

Maybe someone will post a USB device that they know of that is supported under Knoppix (I don't know if any exist but I can't say that they don't). But be very careful if you go this route that you get the exact version number of the device that you were told works and that you can return it without a "restocking fee" if it does not, and consider if you really want to use such a device for wireless networking in the first place.

The last time I looked, no one had posted any USB device that worked in the wireless networking section of the wiki.

[vk2emq]

This reply has been posted using Kanotix Cebit 2006 RC3 on an HP Compaq nx6125 laptop connected to the net using a Dlink DWL-G122 H/W Ver B1 F/W Ver 2.03. This laptop has a built in Broadcom WLAN module which I still haven't got operating under Linux. The USB dongle uses the Ralink 2570 driver which is built in the kernel of this version of Kanotix - use the Netcardconfig utility to configure the dongle which appears as rausb0 .... Note subsequent versions of Kanotix do not seem to have this driver installed ....

I have a question about getting the Dlink DWL-G122 operating under Knoppix 5. I note that the ralink 2570 source code is available in the Knoppix2 cloop file and have made the module rt2570.ko - but modprobe does not seem to recognise the presence of the module. On bootup of the Knoppix5 DVD the Dlink dongle is recognised as eth3 ( there are 2 other eth ports on the motherboard - an ASUS A8N SLI Premium ) and the rt2500usb module is loaded for the Dlink.

Any pointers on how to install the G122 dongle on Knoppix5 in particular and other distributions in general would be much appreciated,

regards,

John vk2emq

[acandr]

I have working wifi in Kanotix 2004-3,4 using pcmcia card from www.intellinet-network.com using mod.520614. They have Linux drivers if
needed but are built into Kanotix, just boot live or hd and configure wlan0. Check out Kwifi Manager for info. PCI card would work fine to I
suppose also. Card cost 25.00 usd for 11mb card which is well enough for jumping on a public WAP on the fly.