Emachines M6811 + Gentoo Hesitation

Ishakir · n00b Joined: 22 Jun 2004 Posts: 4

Hello folks,

I'm relatively new into the whole Linux world and I'm ready to install Gentoo on my laptop. I was going to install it last year but I decided not to because of the lack of driver support for wifi cards employing the Broadcom chipset. The machine I'd like to get an install going on is the Emachines M6811. Does anyone know if there is full support (outside ndis) for this particular card yet? I saw some drivers on the Broadcom website (http://www.broadcom.com/support/ethernet_nic/downloaddrivers.php) but I am unsure if these will work with my particular card.

Does anyone have any experience with this particular laptop + Linux?

Thanks a lot for your time, I greatly appreciate it.

Regards,
Ishakir

Ishakir · n00b Joined: 22 Jun 2004 Posts: 4

Bump

cyrillic · Posted: Thu May 25, 2006 12:44 am Post subject:

The drivers you linked to are for Broadcom wired NICs. These are already well supported in the Linux kernel.
Broadcom wireless NICs are another story - no direct support from the manufacturer, and 3rd party support is still under development as far as I know.

If you don't want to use ndiswrapper, then your best choice is to buy hardware that is supported better.

Ishakir · n00b Joined: 22 Jun 2004 Posts: 4

That's disheartening...

Kind of off topic now, I apologize, but which wireless NIC would you recommend for Linux, I hear the orinoco's are the best supported?

Thanks,
Ishakir

cyrillic · Posted: Thu May 25, 2006 7:13 pm Post subject:

I have a couple of wireless cards with Atheros chips (using the madwifi driver) that work nicely.

I have also heard that Intel wireless chips and Ralink wireless chips are well supported.