Dipping my linux toe

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You should have most luck with a USB wireless dongle, as long as it isn't brand new and is pretty well known. Try to do some research before buying anything you can usually find out what chipset a wireless adapter uses before you buy it, and thus if it is supported by the latest and greatest Linux kernel.

On PCMCIA cards, I'd urge caution, there was a significant change in the way PCMCIA cards are handled in the not so distant past essentially a they come under PCI rather than cardbus nowadays and I have no idea how that affected existing drivers
 
Remember USB 1 is only 12megabits, which is still faster than most ADSL conections but if you are on say Virgin medias 50megabit service you may be doing yourself a diservice
 
google around, tbh. Atheros chipsets are the best for linux, so try to get one of them (they work "out of the box").

Try not to get a prism54/prismGT or Top Dog - as I've had issue with both of these in the past and are a pita to get configured in the first place.

If your laptop has an inbuilt antenna for a mini-pci card, then defo go for one of them, as they're always in the machine and there's no trailing leads and you can't accidentally leave them at home, etc.

I have an HP internal card on one laptop (I think it's a w400 or w500) and a netgear pcmcia wg511t for the other. both were very cheap and just work as they are Atheros chips.

Laptops are currently running Ubuntu 8.10 and 9.04, but have run Arch + Gentoo as well.
 
.walls said:
google around, tbh. Atheros chipsets are the best for linux, so try to get one of them (they work "out of the box").

Try not to get a prism54/prismGT or Top Dog - as I've had issue with both of these in the past and are a pita to get configured in the first place.

If your laptop has an inbuilt antenna for a mini-pci card, then defo go for one of them, as they're always in the machine and there's no trailing leads and you can't accidentally leave them at home, etc.

I have an HP internal card on one laptop (I think it's a w400 or w500) and a netgear pcmcia wg511t for the other. both were very cheap and just work as they are Atheros chips.

Laptops are currently running Ubuntu 8.10 and 9.04, but have run Arch + Gentoo as well.
Click to expand...

Artheros chipsets don't work out of the box at all, Debian will not install the correct drivers, as they're closed source IIRC, just like Intel drivers you will need to do a "non-free" repos change:confused:
 
dangerstat said:
On PCMCIA cards, I'd urge caution, there was a significant change in the way PCMCIA cards are handled in the not so distant past essentially a they come under PCI rather than cardbus nowadays and I have no idea how that affected existing drivers
Click to expand...

I got a relatively new Belkin Wireless G card, worked right out of the box. I was rather impressed as ive had trouble with usb dongles in the past.
 
dangerstat said:
Artheros chipsets don't work out of the box at all, Debian will not install the correct drivers, as they're closed source IIRC, just like Intel drivers you will need to do a "non-free" repos change:confused:
Click to expand...

Fair enough... every linux distro that I've used on a laptop has recognised them out of the box (and that includes some on live cds).

Bear in mind that Debian is rather purist by nature and refuse to add any non-free software by default. Other distros are not so anal.
 
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