Wireless LAN cards for Fedora?

[Jesus Jr M Salvo]

2008/8/6 Bill Davidsen <davidsen at tmr.com>:
> Jesus Jr M Salvo wrote:
>>
>> 2008/8/1 bruce <bedouglas at earthlink.net>:
>>>
>>> hi...
>>>
>>> for my $0.02....
>>>
>>> i would argue for getting a cheap ~$40 linksys G usb wireless dongle...
>>>
>>> i have a laptop, amd x64, running fedora8, and after trying for a few
>>> days
>>> to get the madwifi/atheros stuff working, i got the usb dongle, plugged
>>> it
>>> in, and lo and behold.. up/running in a matter of 5 mins!!!
>>>
>>> good luck...
>>>
>>>
>>
>> I second that .. I just bought a Linkys WUSB54GC and it worked right
>> out of the box with Fedora9 x86_64.
>> It is using the rt73usb driver / module ... and the rtx drivers have
>> been included in main-line kernel 2.6.22(?) since about Jan 2008.
>>
> I was ordering this and started reading reviews, really doesn't get a lot of
> love from people who have it:
>  http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16833124187
>
> I don't suppose anyone has tried the newer WUSB600N or WUSB300N, they both
> got decent reviews, support 802.11n (not a requirement), 256 bit encryption,
> and WPA2. The last could be an issue to connect at some customer sites. I'd
> love to have the features, the size of the 300N isn't an issue, and the
> price is less important than the reliability.
>
> Most of the complaints are about signal, I'm spoiled, my old ACER laptop
> with ipw2200 and whatever firmware was around when FC4 was new will work at
> home from my office to the library, through a floor with 2x8 joists and
> three real (plaster and lathe) walls, and will hear two routers in the
> apartment house down the road and three in the college, at least 400' and
> two brick walls away. People who say they have problems through a sheetrock
> wall make me think the sensitivity is lacking.
>
> Google finds many questions on these adaptors, and only minimal success
> using ndiswrapper, which is not a long term solution. Well, newegg has these
> WUSB54GC on sale, I'll take a chance on getting one and see if it holds up.
> Maybe someone else will get a driver for the fancy new devices in the
> meantime.
>
> Thanks for the part number.
>

Well ... my experience is different from those in the reviews ( maybe
they were using windows as some were talking about re-install? ).
Signal strength is about 75% according to network-manager when I have
direct line-of-sight to the wireless router. I have not tried walking
around the house to see how far I can get a signal from my wireless
router ( also a Linksys ... WRT54GL )

FWIW, I am also running with the latest kernel for F9 x86_64.

[jsalvo]$ uname -r
2.6.25.11-97.fc9.x86_64

[jsalvo]$ /sbin/iwconfig -a

wlan0     IEEE 802.11bg  ESSID:"xxxxxxxxx"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.462 GHz  Access Point: 00:1C:10:B2:19:F0
          Bit Rate=54 Mb/s   Tx-Power=18 dBm
          Retry min limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr=2352 B
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=74/100  Signal level:-36 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0
< ... snip ... >

[jsalvo]$ /sbin/lsusb
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 13b1:0020 Linksys WUSB54GC 802.11g Adapter [ralink rt73]

< ... snip ... >