networking for dummies
Hi All, I have a wireless network established at home using the latest version of a certain very widely used operating system whose name I dare not speak. I've been trying for years to "convert" to Linux, mostly for ideological reasons, but without much luck. I've succesfully installed a few distributions of Linux onto various PC's (mostly older), and I can play CD's and use office software with no problem. The real deal-breaker (the reason I haven't started using linux except as a novelty) is that I've never gotten the internet to work with Linux. With that other OS, installation of a wireless adapter is easy, and the OS generally recognizes it instantly. Are there any linux distros that will do the same thing (perhaps in conjunction with certain wireless adapters) ? Right now I have SUSE 9.1 (Home) running, and when I plug in a USB wireless adapter, nothing happens, and I can't figure out what to do. Any advice will be appreciated. Thanks, Andrew ===== -Dr. Andrew B. Perry Assistant Prof. of Mathematics, Springfield College 263 Alden St., Springfield MA 01109
Do you have wlan-ng installed? You will need to know what driver the adapter needs. What does lsusb (or lsusb -v) look like when the adapter is installed? -Jared
From: Andrew Perry <perryand@yahoo.com> Reply-To: perryand@yahoo.com, Worcester Linux Users Group <wlug@mail.wlug.org> To: wlug@mail.wlug.org Subject: [Wlug] networking for dummies Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2005 09:49:41 -0800 (PST)
Hi All,
I have a wireless network established at home using
the latest version of a certain very widely used operating system whose name I dare not speak. I've been trying for years to "convert" to Linux, mostly for ideological reasons, but without much luck. I've succesfully installed a few distributions of Linux onto various PC's (mostly older), and I can play CD's and use office software with no problem.
The real deal-breaker (the reason I haven't started using linux except as a novelty) is that I've never gotten the internet to work with Linux. With that other OS, installation of a wireless adapter is easy, and the OS generally recognizes it instantly. Are there any linux distros that will do the same thing (perhaps in conjunction with certain wireless adapters) ?
Right now I have SUSE 9.1 (Home) running, and when I plug in a USB wireless adapter, nothing happens, and I can't figure out what to do.
Any advice will be appreciated.
Thanks, Andrew
===== -Dr. Andrew B. Perry Assistant Prof. of Mathematics, Springfield College 263 Alden St., Springfield MA 01109 _______________________________________________ Wlug mailing list Wlug@mail.wlug.org http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug
I've never messed with wireless (yet) but my first thought would be to try it with a wire, and see if you can get to the internet. That would rule out a bunch of stuff. I'm using SuSe 9.1 and 8.2 on different boxes, and they both connected easily to the internet. One thing I've noticed, and I don't know why, sometimes I have to turn off susefirewall and then turn right back on to connect to the network. Greg Andrew Perry wrote:
Hi All,
I have a wireless network established at home using
the latest version of a certain very widely used operating system whose name I dare not speak. I've been trying for years to "convert" to Linux, mostly for ideological reasons, but without much luck. I've succesfully installed a few distributions of Linux onto various PC's (mostly older), and I can play CD's and use office software with no problem.
The real deal-breaker (the reason I haven't started using linux except as a novelty) is that I've never gotten the internet to work with Linux. With that other OS, installation of a wireless adapter is easy, and the OS generally recognizes it instantly. Are there any linux distros that will do the same thing (perhaps in conjunction with certain wireless adapters) ?
Right now I have SUSE 9.1 (Home) running, and when I plug in a USB wireless adapter, nothing happens, and I can't figure out what to do.
Any advice will be appreciated.
Thanks, Andrew
===== -Dr. Andrew B. Perry Assistant Prof. of Mathematics, Springfield College 263 Alden St., Springfield MA 01109 _______________________________________________ Wlug mailing list Wlug@mail.wlug.org http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug
On Wed, Jan 19, 2005 at 09:49:41AM -0800, Andrew Perry wrote:
other OS, installation of a wireless adapter is easy, and the OS generally recognizes it instantly. Are there any linux distros that will do the same thing (perhaps in conjunction with certain wireless adapters) ?
You might try the newest release of a distro. With Fedora Core 3 there have been vast improvements in the area of hardware hotplugging, detection, and configuration integrated with the desktop. There is still more work to do, but it is getting better all the time. I'm not aware specifically of which USB adapters work best. These resources might be useful: SuSE Hardware Database: http://hardwaredb.suse.de/?LANG=en_US Generic Linux USB/Networking/Wireless resources: http://www.linux-usb.org/devices.html#net http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Wireless-HOWTO.html http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/ Finally, you could always bring your machine to a WLUG meeting, and someone could probably give a try at making it work :-) Maybe we need another Linux Install/Configure Fest!
participants (4)
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Andrew Perry -
Charles R. Anderson -
Gregory Avedissian -
Jared Greenwald