I'm leery of FC4+
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| DarrenR114 Jan 09, 2007 9:56 AM EDT |
The price of USB WiFi adapters has really become reasonable of late (costing no more than a PCI ethernet NIC these days) so I went out and bought a couple of Belkin USB WiFi adapters for my machines at home. The Belkin router I was using in bridge mode went kaput, giving me further motivation to put individual WiFi adapters in all my desktop PCs, not just the laptops. I'm currently the custodian for my Mother-in-law's PC since it would be more expensive installing a cable modem at her house when she can use mine. So I put the first WiFi in that one. For all the faults of MS-Windows, when setup works, it just works. And in this case, the USB WiFi worked. Then I put the next one on my main Linux box. I had researched installing a Belkin USB adapter onto FC3 and found (in the Ubuntu and Gentoo forums of all places) the instructions for getting these devices to function with Linux. First I needed to install ndiswrapper (which I downloaded onto my USB pendrive) and follow some steps to get the driver pointing to the proper USB device. This included the use of lsusb to find the device. On Fedora Core 3, this all worked like a charm. This setup is working on that machine to this day. Then I went to do the same thing on my second Linux box, which was running FC4. I got the ndiswrapper installed OK, but when I went to use the USB utilities, they weren't there. I was not the only one who fell victim to this oversight. I put Ubuntu on that PC and it gave me some other problems that just made the whole thing not worth the effort. FC5 had come out shortly before that, so I decided to try that, hoping the problem had been corrected. It wasn't. happy ending: A couple of months later (and that PC sat idle for that entire time) I was handed a Hawking Tech USB WiFi to make function on the WiFi network at work. My workstation at work runs FC4. I did a bit of research, and found the open source drivers (zd1211) for the chipset inside. After digging up the instructions for installation on http://LinuxQuestions.org and the Gentoo Forums, I was able to get the device working on my FC4 desktop. I then went to CompUSA and bought another Hawking USB WiFi. Following the same basic steps as before, I was able to get the cantankerous PC connected with the WiFi at home, running FC5. more tales of woe about FC: The husband of an acquaintance of my wife's installed FC6 onto his brand new Toshiba Satellite and has had nothing but troubles. He went with FC6 because he was familiar with the FC series. I'm afraid to try it out on any of my boxes - which are all older vintage, except one. My primary Linux box is not that old - it's an eMachine that's less than 3 years old. For whatever reason, FC4 would not install from CD onto that box. That's why it's still running FC3. moral of the story: I think I'll just do what I usually do - install the latest version of FC when I install new hardware. |
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