Linux distro with best OOB WiFi support?

[DivideBYZero]

Trying to get my pizza box system up and running with any distro I can that has good Wifi support. I may need to use the NDIS driver as my PCI card has no linux driver.

I tried putting ndiswrapper on ubuntu 6.10, but got a metric sh!t ton of errors during 'make install'. Mostly relating to include files:

error: stdlib.h: no such file or directory

I did the make as root.

Any help much appreciated.

 

[n0cmonkey]

You're missing a development package. I forget which one though.

What chipset on the wireless card?

 

[DivideBYZero]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
You're missing a development package. I forget which one though.

What chipset on the wireless card?

Card is a Belkin F5D7000uk and is a broadcom chipset, PCI id 0320 rev03.

 

[Nothinman]

Using ndiswrapper should be about the same on any distribution, it's only supposed to be a last resort.

Did you even look at this: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Driver/Ndiswrapper ?

 

[DivideBYZero]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
Using ndiswrapper should be about the same on any distribution, it's only supposed to be a last resort.

Did you even look at this: <a target=_blank class=ftalternatingbarlinklarge href="https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Driver/Ndiswrapper"><a target=_blank class=ftalternatingbarlinklarge href="https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Driver/Ndiswrapper">https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Driver/Ndiswrapper</a></a> ?

No.

 

[Abzstrak]

go use windows if you want to be a jackass. It doesn't matter what distro you use, the wrapper is the same.... like nothinman said, its last resort, I'd suggest getting a different wireless card.

 

[Nothinman]

No, but thanks for the sarcastic tone in your post. That way I don't have to thank you if it works.

There was nothing sarcastic about it, ndiswrapper is only meant to be a last resort and I genuinely dind't know whether you had looked at the wiki or not.

 

[DivideBYZero]

I had tried the wrapper, but as I posted I got lib errors when running make install.

Nothinman, I had done quite a bit of online investigation before I came here. Thanks for helping.

Abzstrak, <^> :|

 

[Nothinman]

Well if that's true you should have stdlib.h since it's included libc6-dev which is would have been pulled in by kernel-package and ndiswrapper-source when you installed them.

 

[DivideBYZero]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
Well if that's true you should have stdlib.h since it's included libc6-dev which is would have been pulled in by kernel-package and ndiswrapper-source when you installed them.

I got ndiswrapper from the sourceforge site. My ubuntu install is not connected to the outside world (yet).

Could you suggest some packages that I may be missing? I have gcc.

When it comes to UNIX I'm a Solaris guy in the main. I assumed doing a make would be pretty straightforward.

 

[SleepWalkerX]

I think Ubuntu has a package called build-essential which should give you the packages needed to compile from the source.

However, people are currently reverse-engineering a broadcom driver and in fact you should be able to use it right now. Go to Network Devices. You should be able to see your wireless card there. If you do then all you have to do is work with firmware files. Assuming you actually see the wireless card in Network Devices (somewhere under System) then follow this guide:

http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=1071920&mode=linear

 

[DivideBYZero]

Originally posted by: SleepWalkerX
I think Ubuntu has a package called build-essential which should give you the packages needed to compile from the source.

However, people are currently reverse-engineering a broadcom driver and in fact you should be able to use it right now. Go to Network Devices. You should be able to see your wireless card there. If you do then all you have to do is work with firmware files. Assuming you actually see the wireless card in Network Devices (somewhere under System) then follow this guide:

http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=1071920&mode=linear

I cannot yet see the device from the Networking control, or from iwconfig. I can see the card using lspci, however.

I'll check out your link when I can, none the less.

Thanks for the help.

 

[SleepWalkerX]

Originally posted by: DivideBYZero

Originally posted by: SleepWalkerX
I think Ubuntu has a package called build-essential which should give you the packages needed to compile from the source.

However, people are currently reverse-engineering a broadcom driver and in fact you should be able to use it right now. Go to Network Devices. You should be able to see your wireless card there. If you do then all you have to do is work with firmware files. Assuming you actually see the wireless card in Network Devices (somewhere under System) then follow this guide:

http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=1071920&mode=linear

I cannot yet see the device from the Networking control, or from iwconfig. I can see the card using lspci, however.

I'll check out your link when I can, none the less.

Thanks for the help.

hmm, try typing "lsmod | grep bcm" and see if the bcm43x module shows up at all. If not then try to modprobe it, "sudo modprobe bcm43x" and see if it'll show up at all in your networked devices. the broadcom chipset should be supported.

if that doesn't work out then I guess you could just use ndiswrapper. i'm sorry for not mentioning this before, but instead of going through all these steps to compile it, all you should have to do is just install it through apt-get. "sudo apt-get install ndiswrapper" its much easier this way imho.