Linux Compatible Wireless Cards

[southpaw63119]

I've been digging around the internet for hours trying to figure out what (if any) wireless cards (preferably USB) are currently supported by Linux (i.e. works out of box, no new driver installation necessary), but I haven't been able to come up with much other than the WUSB54G, which no longer seems to be produced.

Are there any still manufactured wireless cards (like I said before, preferably USB) that would work on <most> recent linux distros without installing new drivers? 
(I say most because I intend to install several different distros before this is all through)

Thanks in advance.

[BC_Programmer]

none of the distro's I've tried have had any problems with any of my wireless cards. Seems nearly universal. Although none of them are USB, so I don't know how that would factor in.

[southpaw63119]

Ubuntu, Debian, Slax, and openSUSE have all had trouble with my LinkSys WMP54G wireless card, as well as the 2Wire USB device AT&T gave me when they hooked up U-Verse.

I've been hesitant to buy anything until I have some general idea that it will work relatively easily.

However, most of the USB cards I have looked up appear to have some issues, or require the use of ndiswrapper (which I would like to avoid, if at all possible).

What wireless cards have you used?

[BC_Programmer]

What wireless cards have you used?

D-Link Wireless G RangeBooster, D-Link Xtreme-N Desktop adapter, and the Atheros 9281 adapter built into my laptop., they all worked fine in Mint and Fedora.

I guess I made it sound like I'd tried a lot more then 2 distros with 3 wireless cards

[southpaw63119]

I'm thinking I might just go ahead and buy either the D-Link Xtreme N Dual Band USB Adapter (DWA 160) or the D-Link RangeBooster N USB Adapter (DWA 140) based on information here: http://linux-wless.passys.nl/query_hostif.php?hostif=USB,
and because you seem to have had success with similarly named products from that brand...the latter certainly not being a surefire way to determine anything, but what the heck.

I don't really have any 802.11N compliant network cards anyway, so worst case scenario I'll have a functioning USB adapter for my Windows OS's.
Best case scenario, the USB card works as mentioned in the website I included, and I will have no trouble installing the firmware to get it to work.

I'll probably post later with which card I ended up buying, and how easy/difficult it was to set up in various Linux distros (Ubuntu, openSUSE, maybe SLAX LiveCD or usb if I can find where I put it...).

[southpaw63119]

D-Link Wireless G RangeBooster, D-Link Xtreme-N Desktop adapter, and the Atheros 9281 adapter built into my laptop., they all worked fine in Mint and Fedora.

I guess I made it sound like I'd tried a lot more then 2 distros with 3 wireless cards

Just trying those 2 distros was probably plenty--they are based on two different package management systems at the very least (dpkg and RPM respectively).
Well, enough to convince me anyway. 

[southpaw63119]

I ended up trying the Tenda W311U because it was cheap and a salesperson said it would work.
Which it did, after I spent some time installing the driver off of their website.
Which is a process I hate doing.

So, I plan on returning that USB wireless card (the store I purchased from should probably take it back, according to their terms and conditions.  I wouldn't mind taking the "15% restocking fee" hit if they decide to charge me that because the product was less than $15 when all was said and done).

I plan on attempting the DWA-160 wireless adapter next because the most recent DWA-140 has this marked in the site I posted earlier:

Driver available from manufacturer: http://www.ralinktech.com/support.php?s=2 , in kernel since 2.6.30; different driver! Firmware required

I'm not entirely certain what it means by different driver, but it does make it sound like I will have better luck with the DWA-160 adapter.



UPDATES:
The Belkin F5D7050 allegedly should work out of the box with no driver setup according to the site I posted earlier and the following:
http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_28#head-281b3bcb2a51e0c1ba5bc41126ee87f865aff6a1
However, it is not 802.11n compliant.

[southpaw63119]

D-Link DWA-125 allegedly works out of the box with PCLinuxOS according to following link:
http://groups.google.com/group/ilug-tvm/browse_thread/thread/0c192b5ee9effc34/843fd4f29aa64c88?lnk=raot

TrendNet TEW-424UB allegedly works out of the box with Ubuntu according to the following link:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=9484611

However, I can't find any chipset/revision listings for these supposedly working cards...

[southpaw63119]

Two more *allegedly* functioning cards right out of the box

Rosewill RNX-G1 will allegedly work out of the box on most distros, according to:
http://moderngeek.com/node/71

EDIMAX EW-7717Un will allegedly work out of the box in Kubuntu 9.04, according to:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16833315081

D-Link DWA-140 allegedly worked out of the box for Ubuntu 9.0.4 according to:
http://forums.dlink.com/index.php?topic=7272.0
But that was in September last year.  The chipset may be different on more recent cards...

[southpaw63119]

Good news!

The D-Link Rangebooster N USB Adapter (DWA-140) works with Ubuntu 10.04 straight out of the box!
I intend to test this with slax live (USB) and Fedora later.  I will post my results on those as soon as I have tried them (barring my failure to get those running on my pc).

EDIT: I forgot to mention it was DWA-140 Revision B1, firmware version 1.3.
Cheers.

[southpaw63119]

The DWA-140 adapter does not work straight out of the box with Fedora, but probably would not require much work to get it running (Fedora recognizes it and the adapter finds networks, but it will not connect).
I still have yet to test it with Slax...will complete later today.

UPDATE: I just realized this probably should have been a thread in Networking, not Hardware.
I apologize if I placed this in the incorrect location.

[southpaw63119]

Both Slax and Mint Live appear to have the same issue as Fedora,
which should be easy to resolve.
FYI.