At last - no more tripping over the carelessly laid Cat5 cable lying on the floor, for my Linux box is now using its wireless card. I used Ndiswrapper to get it working, which basically allows you to run (some) Windows drivers under Linux.

The instructions are fairly straightforward - and if you're using something like Yum to keep your system up to date and have the Livna repository included, then you can skip compiling and just use yum install ndiswrapper kernel-module-ndiswrapper-$(uname -r) to get started.

Some other items of note:

• if your adapter isn't on the big list - as mine wasn't - you might find it elsewhere in the wiki
• if you can't get the card to connect properly, try turning off either the security or the Access Control List temporarily
• the installation instructions rather leave you in the lurch as to how to make the setting permanent. There's a hint at the end of the Fedora page which tells you to create “the files in the appropriate folders”. These files are all called ifcfg-wlan0, all contain the same settings and go in:
  1. /etc/sysconfig/networking/devices/
  2. /etc/sysconfig/networking/profiles/default/
  3. /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/
  You can find the settings you can use in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifup-wireless. Mine looks something like:

  
  DEVICE=wlan0
  BOOTPROTO=none
  IPADDR=192.168.0.6
  NETMASK=255.255.255.0
  GATEWAY=192.168.0.1
  ONBOOT=yes
  TYPE=Wireless
  DHCP_HOSTNAME=elmonstro.auzsoft.net
  USERCTL=no
  PEERDNS=yes
  IPV6INIT=no
  HWADDR=00:0c:41:64:a0:5e
  MODE=Managed
  CHANNEL=11
  ESSID=AUZSOFT
  SECURITYMODE=open
  DOMAIN=
  RATE=
  KEY=XXXXXXXXXX
  

  
  (the key line can also be moved to it's own file: keys-wlan0 which is probably for the best as it can be made readable only by root then)
• The line alias wlan0 ndiswrapper should be added to the end of /etc/modprobe.conf
• Finally, you need to load the ndiswrapper kernel module on boot, which this post says how to do