Wireless for the Linux Laptop (Part 3)

Kernelnewbies, a site to explain linux kernel stuff for people. Here’s a faq page. Pardon me for being dense, but how do I decipher the numbering system for kernels? Aha, here’s a good reference guide.

I’ve become slightly more optimistic about getting wireless support for a linux laptop. First, I think I understand my previous difficulties. I should have checked the Fedora kernel to see what kind of support was possible for wireless devices. Getting support compiled in is a lot more efficient than trying to get utilities like ndiswrapper to make it work.

One of the problems is that the linux user base is already a select group; they don’t need as much hand-holding as the typical user (i.e., I) do. Because of this, many of the introductory steps are just not explained. Also, it’s difficult to verify beforehand that your hardware is compatible with whatever distribution you happen to be working with. Hardware support exists on the kernel level, not on the distribution’s frontend, so they just don’t provide information about support. (About the best idea I’ve seen is using a bootable Knoppix CD to test hardware compatibility before you actually install linux Hopefully in February or so I’ll have a full report of how ordinary users can make decisions for linux wireless to be a piece of cake.

Here’s a user site/forum about linux-on-laptop. I just keep hearing better and better things about SUSE, ever since IBM declared them a “strategic partner” yesterday on slashdot.