How do you ger the OS to recognise a USB Wi-Fi adapter?

I have USB Wi-Fi adapters from various manufacturers (Buffalo,
Hawking etc) which I usually use with my Tivos or to connect my WinXP
box to my network doiwnstairs.
I sucessfully installed the latest copy of Linux (tried Redhat on 1
Hard Drive and Suse on another) but when it got to the Networking
part, I was never able to configure it to connect to the interet. I
had thought like with Windows, the USB adapter would have been
recognized automatically and configured without any input on my part
which is what usually happens under Windows. Unplugging and
re-plugging-in the adapter doesn't make the OS bat an eye to ask me
for a driver and I'm lost trying to figure out what I need to do now
to get internet connectivity.
Any help or suggestions appreciated.
Cheers,
Arawak

Arawak wrote:

> I have USB Wi-Fi adapters from various manufacturers (Buffalo,
> Hawking etc) which I usually use with my Tivos or to connect my WinXP
> box to my network doiwnstairs.
> I sucessfully installed the latest copy of Linux (tried Redhat on 1
> Hard Drive and Suse on another) but when it got to the Networking
> part, I was never able to configure it to connect to the interet. I
> had thought like with Windows, the USB adapter would have been
> recognized automatically and configured without any input on my part
> which is what usually happens under Windows. Unplugging and
> re-plugging-in the adapter doesn't make the OS bat an eye to ask me
> for a driver and I'm lost trying to figure out what I need to do now
> to get internet connectivity.
> Any help or suggestions appreciated.
> Cheers,
> Arawak
i tried "linux usb wifi" in google and found this
"http://www.mepis.org/node/5234"
--
JosephKK