Linux and usb wireless dongles/ pc cards?

[LoopyIT]

I'm starting to consider putting linux back on my second laptop and giving it another go. I daren't mess around with alternative osystems on my vaio- vaio FE owners seem to have enough trouble just sourcing the right drivers if they simply want to move to a different flavour of windows without anything extra!

My internet connection is wireless, so I'm thinking of getting a usb dongle or card to slot in to give the IBM X20 wireless capability. I know it'd work fine in Win 200- the current os- but like I say, I'd like to experiment with linux again. Which distros work best with wireless in these circs? The machine specs are : 20GBHDD/128 ram and PIII 600Hz. I was able to run Ubuntoo on it when Badger came out with no difficulties, but I'd prefer a distro with installation routines as close to windows as poss- ie, click on executable and the routine runs!!

Any suggestions?

[seablade]

Ubuntu will probably be your best bet actually.

But with wireless it is less the distro and more who makes the chipset used in the card that matters for support. Try to get an aetheros chipset card if you can.

Past that I will let others help you as I have limited experience iwth wireless in linux recently.

Seablade

[DimGR]

Atheros / madwifi owns

[bKT]

I've found that the three of four laptops that I've put Linux on the Linksys cards worked without at hitch all three of the times. I attempted using a new SMC wireless card with Ubuntu on this same laptop, and it didn't catch. Once I got back from the trip, installed the Linksys card, and booted up great. I'm not sure the chipset but I was rather satisfied.

The past few days I've been using Damn Small Linux on the same laptop and it instantly recognized the same WiFI card (I think it may be b/g or just b only). It also works without a hitch with the docking station that I got with this old thing, and I am currently running off the Ethernet port.