WONT RUN LINUX wireless networking

Apr 13, 2007 9 Replies

To Anyone; I have a DELL LAPTOP 9200 Pemtium M 1gb RAM 60GB hdd Windows XP HE . Easiest connection I ever made to WINDOWS! Intel/PROWireless WINDOWS sw. found an open broadcaster and I was on the air & surfing before the cable guy came three days after the laptop arrived. Always connects to windows



I cannot get any LINUX distro to work with the wireless networking mini-pci card INTEL 2200BG inside the DELL LAPTOP 9200 I have. Some of mixture of errors have been encountered searching thru DMESG|grep ipw or DMESG|grep fail searches.



Firmware, won't load error code -2 or -5 Intel card not recognized hardware Missing library module ipw2200.xx.xx.xx Missing library module ieee80211.yy.yy.yy



OR the wireless is completely ignored.



Fedora 4&5 ,Mandriva, SUSE, Ubuntu, Knoppix,SimplyMepis,Gentoo,Debian POSTED messgaes all over the message boards to no avail.



READY to give up on LINUX being a MOBILE platform for main line corporate acquisition. Make my recommendations and stay with Microsoft® or Apple-On-Intel®.



Really a shame that all those laptop won't do LINUX and many won't do VISTA® with high hardware requirements. That means a lot of Money for Gate$ and CREW because the LINUX community IGNORED the blue guys from Intel® commercials. Intel Centrino Mobile Technology Inside® and the laptop stickers.



Intel site virtually worthless for LINUX too far under the covers with WINDOWS® and now Apple®.



I hope this gets stuck under under Michael Dell's nose and Intel and LINUS TORVALD.



Laptops don't do wireless unless its the first wireless card made for a laptop. The mobile Intel486 , 25 pound variety.



Jack from Princeton NJ


  1. stop yelling
  2. I've had a 2200BG running wireless in my IBM R51 for two years now. It can be done.
  3. STFW

You have at least 2, maybe three problems. First of all, you need the firmware for the ipw2200. It is usually not distributed with a standard CD. For example openSUSE has it on the "add-on" CD. Second, it looks as if the kernel you were using doesn't have ieee80211 either built in or as a module. Did you build your own?

The rest of your ugly rant is snipped. You should use a distro that employs NetworkManager for controlling network connections (Fedora and openSUSE both do. I'm not sure about Ubuntu.). It is much easier to use than Windows. You get an icon in the system tray that shows the various wireless networks that are seen. When you click on one of them, it connects. Even you will be able to handle it.

found an open broadcaster and I was on the air & surfing before the cable guy came three days after the laptop arrived.

card INTEL 2200BG inside the DELL LAPTOP 9200 I have.

or DMESG|grep fail searches.

Linux distributions may not work out of the box, but it's not espcecially difficult to get them to work, and I believe your hardware is among the easiest.

See

formatting link
on how to get a bunch of things working under Fedora Core, including wireless networking.

Scott

On Fri, 13 Apr 2007 10:46:41 -0400, the_bmac wrote in :

And cut out the HTML.

Translated from the original html... please don't post html.

Windows tends to be an easy WiFi installation for supported hardware.

A coworker with a Dell laptop and internal Intel wifi had it running so easily with Fedora FC5 that he didn't even know what to tell me about how he did it.

He's not very technical, and I was trying to get a Netgear PCMCIA card running on my laptop, which I finally abandoned and got a DLink card. that was more difficult than Windows, but it worked.

Hmm. This works on Windows? If there is no firmware...

Windows Vista will eventually get sorted out.

I think Linux came and went. Support exists for some cards, and will never exist for others.

But you happen to have a cardset that it supported natively. You just have some hardware/firmware issue.

I doubt that they look at flailing rants.

I see that someone else has started to address the firmware issue. Once that gets sorted out, you should be good to go with an Intel 2200.

Maybe a visit to

formatting link
would be helpful.

found an open broadcaster and I was on the air & surfing before the cable guy came three days after the laptop arrived.

card INTEL 2200BG inside the DELL LAPTOP 9200 I have.

or DMESG|grep fail searches.

acquisition. Make my recommendations and stay with Microsoft® or Apple-On-Intel®.

with high hardware requirements. That means a lot of Money for Gate$ and CREW because the LINUX community IGNORED the blue guys from Intel® commercials. Intel Centrino Mobile Technology Inside® and the laptop stickers.

WINDOWS® and now Apple®.

laptop. The mobile Intel486 , 25 pound variety.

60GB

to WINDOWS!

wireless

Mobile

LINUX

its

variety.

That's not necessary when there is good Linux support from Intel for this card.

On Fri, 13 Apr 2007 16:33:53 +0000, John Navas sez:

Sit up straight, and quit picking your nose.

Join the Discussion

Have something to add? Share your thoughts — no account required.

Didn't find your answer?

Ask the community — no account required