Confusion about the RT2500 wlan driver project

ChojinDSL · l33t Joined: 07 Jul 2003 Posts: 784

I was checking out what 54mbit wlan cards work under linux. Well I came across a german site which sells hardware that is supposed to work with linux. For 54mbit they only offer 3 cards and this one was the cheapest. It supposedly contains a RT2500 chipset and they link to the official Ralink website for the driver.

So I checked it out, did some more googling, and apparently there is 1. the official opensource driver from Ralink, and 2. an Opensource project thats also providing a driver for this chipset.

Im kind of confused. Is it like, the Official driver works well, but the sourceforge opensource driver project tries to build on the official driver and extend its functionality? Are they both the same? Which one is better.

By the way, is this the only chipset for which the manufacturor has opensourced the drivers? Seems very cool of them. I'm surprised that this wlan chipset doesnt get recommended more often in all those "which wlan card should I buy" threads.

While I'm at it, are there any issues regarding this that I should be aware of?

mrv · Posted: Sun Feb 20, 2005 10:23 am Post subject:

Hi,

I have a 802.11b WLAN card that is based on RaLink chipset. I'm currently using the RaLink's Windows NDIS driver with the net-wireless/ndiswrapper and it seems to work ok.

-mrv-

ChojinDSL · l33t Joined: 07 Jul 2003 Posts: 784

Wouldnt it be better to use a native driver vs: an emulated one through ndiswrapper?

Are you able to get full speed and all of the features?

Sorcerer'sApprentice · Posted: Sun Feb 20, 2005 7:06 pm Post subject:

I use latest drivers from the Sourceforge CVS for my RT2500, and my wireless connection is perfectly stable (which it is not on Windows).

As far as I'm aware, RaLink opensourced their RT2400/RT2500 drivers, and no longer develop them (I could be wrong about this). You want to use newer SourceForge drivers, which are basically the same drivers with bug fixes.

I did in the past use NdisWrapper, until I discovered these drivers. I can't see any reason to use it, when there are opensource drivers that are a) native and b) more stable.
_________________
"One of the major problems encountered in time travel is not that of accidentally becoming your own father or mother ... The major problem is quite simply one of grammar..."

Douglas Adams

mrv · Posted: Mon Feb 21, 2005 9:56 am Post subject:

I might also switch to use the open source driver (not that I have had problems with ndiswrapper, it has worked flawlessly for me). Can you point me a link to good (up-to-date) how-to ?

-mrv-

Sorcerer'sApprentice · Posted: Mon Feb 21, 2005 7:32 pm Post subject:

If you have a 802.11b card, then it will be based on the RT2400 chipset.

The driver you want can be downloaded from here. There appear to be some new releases coming soon (currently in beta), if you can bear the wait.

Although I didn't follow it myself, this HOWTO appears to be accurate and up to date. If you have any problems compiling (as I did against the newer nitro kernels), try the latest CVS edition.
_________________
"One of the major problems encountered in time travel is not that of accidentally becoming your own father or mother ... The major problem is quite simply one of grammar..."

Douglas Adams

genstef · Posted: Mon Feb 21, 2005 9:17 pm Post subject:

emerge rt2500 should also work .. I just updated it to beta2

Sorcerer'sApprentice · Posted: Wed Feb 23, 2005 10:21 pm Post subject:

rickvernam · Guru Joined: 09 Jul 2004 Posts: 313

So I emerged rt2500 (1.1.0_beta2 for amd64), and like it says I put rt2500 in /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6
I've got wireless support & extensions in kernel, but without any drivers selected...

amon-ra · n00b Joined: 21 Apr 2003 Posts: 59 Location: Albacete

same problem here driver loads as a pci driver in /sys/bus/pci/drivers and i have a pcmcia card.

if I put in /etc/pcmcia/config: