USB wireless adaptor (802.11g)

[Larry Grover]

Shu Hung (Koala) wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I'm planning to buy a USB wireless adaptor
> for my laptop but hesitated. I don't know
> what model should I go for and how exactly
> should I deploy the adaptor.
> 
> Any suggestion on adaptor's model?
> Any good documentation on installation?
> (It would be great if the adaptor JUST WORK
> with ubuntu)
> 
> 
> Thanks,
> Koala Yeung
> 

I bought a usb wireless adapter just a couple of weeks ago.  It was not 
easy to decide what to buy.  Wireless usb support in the linux kernel 
seems rather patchy.  I needed a device with a native linux driver 
(ndiswrapper was not an option), and the manufacturers certainly do not 
make it easy to figure out what chipsets they use in their products.

I started with this wiki page:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardwareSupportComponentsWirelessNetworkCards?action=show&redirect=WirelessNetworkCards
There is a section on wireless usb adapters near the bottom of the page.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find any of the adapters listed on the wiki 
page.  But while I was searching for a supplier for one of them, I came 
across this page, for the Prismiq WUA-11G sold by Newegg:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16833198003
There are two customer reviews on this page, and they both said it 
worked on their linux systems, so I took a gamble and ordered one.  I 
was very pleased to find out that it did, in fact, "just work", at least 
on the two systems I tested it on:  powerpc (iBook) running 
ubuntu-dapper and and x86 system running breezy.

The Prismiq WUA-11G uses a zd1211 chip, so I imagine any wireless usb 
adapter using this chip should also work.  There is a list of devices 
using this chip here:  http://zd1211.ath.cx/

Regards,
Larry