Linux native hardware support ?

[The Linuxator]

I am planning to get an IBM R50e Thinkpad, and I am researching it from all sides very carefuly, everything is turning out great last thing on the list is the mini-PCI wireless card builtin Wifi , I know that all newest kernels of linux do support main intel mini-pci cards natively is this true and if it is will this Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG (802.11b/g) be working out of the box with Fedora Core 4 32-bit ? And can anybody confirm it from a personal experience ?

Edit : offcourse I will be updating to the newest Kernel available.

 

[The Linuxator]

bump

 

[TGS]

Possibly

Intel Link

Or FC4 packages

Let us know how it turns out.

 

[The Linuxator]

So from what I understand from the first provided link, If you have the newest kernel 2.6+ there should be no problem, because the driver would be compiled within the kernel no?

 

[drag]

The intel wireless should work.

I don't know if it'll work 'out of the box', but definately Fedora should have some packages aviable for it if it's not part of their kernel package. Should only take a few minutes to install using yum.

If Fedora doesn't have a package for that, you can aquire access to third party repositories thru Yum very easily.

Check out this page: http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/apt/ and read the FAQ, especially things about mixing and matching repositories.

Dag's stuff should be perfectly compatable with Atrpms among others.

Even if your wifi is supported out of the box you'd still want to check that site out for things like windows media support and the ability to break CSS encryption on DVDs with libdvdcss2.


as a side note:

If you want all the possible features of the card it may be a good idea to check out this page:
http://blogaboutsecurity.org/?p=8

Were it describes to uninstall the drivers using Yum or apt-get and install them manually. That way you can get monitor mode to work and be able to use things like kismat to do wireless sniffing and such.

For extra reference there is also some laptops come with a toggle switch to turn on and off wireless stuff to do things like preserve battery life and such. You can find more information about it here:
http://rfswitch.sourceforge.net/?page=laptop_matrix

 

[The Linuxator]

Once I get the laptop and get that mini-pci card to work then everything else is a breeze , I could install KWIFI , and that will take care of sniffing, and configurating encryption keys, plus most of the time I will be at the university so open hot spots so , WEP compability issues should be no problem for me.

 

[P0ldy]

I have the IPW2200 PRO in my laptop. Under Ubuntu, it worked out of box. I assume FC will give you the same results. If not, it's trivial to install. In your kernel, AC4 and MIC cryptography have to be added. But I doubt you ever have to recompile a FC kernel.

 

[The Linuxator]

Originally posted by: P0ldy
I have the IPW2200 PRO in my laptop. Under Ubuntu, it worked out of box. I assume FC will give you the same results. If not, it's trivial to install. In your kernel, AC4 and MIC cryptography have to be added. But I doubt you ever have to recompile a FC kernel.

Agreed.

If this works this will be the first time I will see Linux running a WiFi connection. after 6 some wireless cards that failed miserabley to work under ndiswrapper, finally there will be no need for it.