taking wifi drivers from other distro

Forum: Networking
Topic: taking wifi drivers from other distro
started by: Lfys

Posted by Lfys on Nov. 10 2006,08:02

I am a fairly new Ubuntu user. In Ubuntu my USR5410 pcmcia wifi card (with acx111 chipset) works fine.

Since Ubuntu and DSL are both members of the Debian family, shouldn't it be possible to copy the drivers from Ubuntu to DSL in order to make my wifi card work in DSL?
And if so ... I don't have a clue which files to use ...

Posted by skaos on Nov. 10 2006,10:55

I don't think it will work: DSL uses a 2.4.x kernel and Ubuntu a 2.6.x kernel, and from what I understand you cannot mix modules (driver in winspeak) from different kernel series'.

Posted by Lfys on Nov. 10 2006,11:38

So if I find a debian-type distro with the right kernel it SHOULD work?

Posted by skaos on Nov. 10 2006,14:14

DSL uses kernel 2.4.26 and so does Slackware 10.0 (I think this is kernel specific, not distro specific). You could try - maybe it works, maybe it doesn't. If it doesn't work, you could try to install the myDSL gnu-utils package and use 'modprobe -f' to force it (busybox' modprobe doesn't support -f).

Posted by Winter Knight on Nov. 10 2006,15:37

Taking drivers from other distros and forcing them into DSL's kernel seems like a bad idea. Have you considered compiling the source? Here is the home page: < http://acx100.sourceforge.net >

Whatever you end up doing, please make a DSL extension so the rest of us can enjoy it too. I would, but I don't have a acx111 card to test with.

Posted by Lfys on Nov. 11 2006,14:10

As I said, I'm a fairly new linux user. Some time ago I managed to get the card working in Puppy Linux only because somebody else had already done the dirty work and wrote a decent manual how to do it.

Maybe if I ever have time ... I will read about what the word "compiling" really means ...

.

In the mean time I think I have a colleague of mine converted to the DSL. He was really impressed about what his old laptop suddenly did after loading the live-DSL. Maybe I can try to convince HIM to take a look at the wifi-stuff ... :-)

Posted by Juanito on Nov. 11 2006,17:15

If you have access to a Knoppix 3.4 CD or the download, you could boot using the CD and see if your wifi card works.

If your card does work, then you should be able to figure out which driver(s) to copy across from Knoppix to DSL from "lsmod" - the same driver(s) will work when restored under DSL.

If your card does not work, but you can find a driver download then you will be able to compile the driver under Knoppix and copy it across to DSL.