Wifi card chipset DB

[marcus]

On Tuesday 26 September 2006 06:48, gabrielle harrison and Paul van den 
Bergen wrote:
> You've probably checked already, but have a search around the various
> community wifi groups - they often have breakdowns of chipsets on
> cards, ditto the dev sites for the linux wifi drivers. ndiswrapper
> springs to mind... e.g.
> http://www.linux-wlan.org/docs/wlan_adapters.html.gz

I really wanted a Linux solution without ndiswrapper, if possible. I'd 
like to support those manufacturers who support Open Source drivers. I 
think voting with our feet, or wallets, is a viable option to get more 
manufacturers to support Linux.

Here's what I did:

1) First attempt: I found some Trendware cards locally then phoned their 
support hotline about the chipsets, which is also open 24/7 from 
Europe. They had all the answers prepared, so I was impressed, even had 
some unsupported Linux info ready for me. However, I could not find the 
PCMCIA card with the Atheros chipset to purchase. The only option was a 
Wifi USB stick with Atheros. I'm not too sure about USB Wifi working?
Their Broadcom card they said had been reported to work under Linux, but 
I smelled ndiswrapper when hearing Broadcom, not sure if that is still 
correct?

2) Next I searched ebay for "Atheros", and that oddly led to success. 
Found a vendor selling Atheros cards by TP-Link for under 18 Euros 
(~$22). Then Googled to check and an Ubuntu forum revealed that the 
card works with Ubuntu and supports WPA encryption.

The various Atheros cards reported to work under Linux are listed here:

http://madwifi.org/wiki/Compatibility

I hope this helps somebody on their quest for a Linux Wifi card.


Marcus