Netgear wireless card

Hi!
I am a newbie in Linux, however I make a lot of effort to get rid of Windoze
as much as I can.
I would like to buy a PCMCIA card for my laptop.
I have installed Mandrake 9.0, however the version is not an issue I can
upgrade the kernel if necessary.
I was thinking of buying a Netgear WG511GE. I googled it to find if there
are any drivers for Linux.
However, I am not so sure for the results I got.
Does anyone know or have already used this card with Linux?
If not which card should I look for?

Thnx in advance,
John

On Fri, 23 Jan 2004 22:33:37 +0200, "John"
<reply_to_group@no_spam.com> wrote:

>Hi!
>I am a newbie in Linux, however I make a lot of effort to get rid of Windoze
>as much as I can.
>I would like to buy a PCMCIA card for my laptop.
>I have installed Mandrake 9.0, however the version is not an issue I can
>upgrade the kernel if necessary.
>I was thinking of buying a Netgear WG511GE. I googled it to find if there
>are any drivers for Linux.
>However, I am not so sure for the results I got.
>Does anyone know or have already used this card with Linux?
>If not which card should I look for?
>
>Thnx in advance,
>John
>

Good luck! I have an MA521 which has that new Realtek chipset
(RTL8180?). It seems all the new 32 bit cards are now coming with that
chipset. There are drivers of sorts on the Realtek website. I could
not even get them to compile on Fedora. My son got them to compile on
his Gentoo setup but we could not get them to work. I have heard of
some people having success on SuSE 9.0 but even if you can get them to
work, it is not exactly plug n' play. You must create a custom script
to configure it.

There are no open source drivers out there for them. Realtek is not
releasing their code. The drivers that they supply have a compiled in
binary component. Ya know, kinda like what NVidia does. The difference
is that the NVidia drivers actually work.

There is also a wrapper for the windows drivers available from here.

http://www.linuxant.com/driverloader/

They are proprietary and they cost but there is a free 30 trial.
Neither myself or my son could get those to work either. It was back
to WIN2K on our Dell I7Ks for now at least.

You have two choices. Wait until we see some better support or, get an
older card with a supported chipset. The Netgear MA401 has the Prism
chipset and should work right out of the box. Yes it is *only* 802.11b
but so what! That standard is widely supported and is fast enough for
*most* uses.

--
"Now are you talking about what it is you know
Or just repeating what it was you heard".
Grace Slick
To email use rpiotro(at)wi(dot)rr(dot)com

Thnx for the reply.
The only problem is that I am in Greece and the 802.11b/g PCMCIA market is
very small, and I can find any card I want (meaning a card that Linux
supports).
Anyway.

"Rich Piotrowski" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> On Fri, 23 Jan 2004 22:33:37 +0200, "John"
> <reply_to_group@no_spam.com> wrote:
>
> >Hi!
> >I am a newbie in Linux, however I make a lot of effort to get rid of
Windoze
> >as much as I can.
> >I would like to buy a PCMCIA card for my laptop.
> >I have installed Mandrake 9.0, however the version is not an issue I can
> >upgrade the kernel if necessary.
> >I was thinking of buying a Netgear WG511GE. I googled it to find if there
> >are any drivers for Linux.
> >However, I am not so sure for the results I got.
> >Does anyone know or have already used this card with Linux?
> >If not which card should I look for?
> >
> >Thnx in advance,
> >John
> >
>
> Good luck! I have an MA521 which has that new Realtek chipset
> (RTL8180?). It seems all the new 32 bit cards are now coming with that
> chipset. There are drivers of sorts on the Realtek website. I could
> not even get them to compile on Fedora. My son got them to compile on
> his Gentoo setup but we could not get them to work. I have heard of
> some people having success on SuSE 9.0 but even if you can get them to
> work, it is not exactly plug n' play. You must create a custom script
> to configure it.
>
> There are no open source drivers out there for them. Realtek is not
> releasing their code. The drivers that they supply have a compiled in
> binary component. Ya know, kinda like what NVidia does. The difference
> is that the NVidia drivers actually work.
>
> There is also a wrapper for the windows drivers available from here.
>
> http://www.linuxant.com/driverloader/
>
> They are proprietary and they cost but there is a free 30 trial.
> Neither myself or my son could get those to work either. It was back
> to WIN2K on our Dell I7Ks for now at least.
>
> You have two choices. Wait until we see some better support or, get an
> older card with a supported chipset. The Netgear MA401 has the Prism
> chipset and should work right out of the box. Yes it is *only* 802.11b
> but so what! That standard is widely supported and is fast enough for
> *most* uses.
>
> --
> "Now are you talking about what it is you know
> Or just repeating what it was you heard".
> Grace Slick
> To email use rpiotro(at)wi(dot)rr(dot)com