linux.gotfoo.org

I loaded up the PCLinuxOS 2007 LiveCD last night and during the setup (of the LiveCD) it asks how you’d like to connect to the network either Ethernet, modem or wireless. On a total whim I choose Wireless. It then asked me to select the Windows driver which I luckily had on a USB drive. Unfortunately PCLinux could not yet see the external USB drive but it could see my Windows NTFS partition. So on another total whim I browsed the Windows partition looking for the Broadcom drivers I had downloaded from Gateway a while back. I found the file that I was looking for (bcmwl5a.inf) which has worked in the past with Xubuntu and my laptop and clicked OK. It did some stuff and then displayed a list of wireless networks. I must point out that I was not connected to a network in another way so at this point the wireless card is working. So I choose my wireless network and entered my security key and bang I’ve got a 54Mbps connection to the internet.

The only downside to this happy story is that PCLinuxOS kept freezing up for a few seconds at a time and it would not launch some applications.

But I am still impressed to get wireless working with a LiveCD.

Ok so I’m all jazzed up about Wifi consistently working on my Gateway Laptop but I have noticed some odd behavior with the wifi connection. When the laptop is connected to the network via the etherenet cable and the wifi is running, the downstream for the wifi card is active and the upstream for the ethernet card is active.

Wifi pulling data from the internet.
Ethernet pushing data to the internet.

Does that make any sense?

This is an update to my previous post Installing Xubuntu 6.06 on a Gateway Laptop.

Summary
Xubuntu 7.04 is a derivative from the popular Ubuntu Linux distro with the difference being Xubuntu uses the Xfce Window Manager instead of Gnome or KDE. Xfce is a light weight Open Source window manager that is fast and efficient which makes Xubuntu ideal for lower end computers. Or if you want a super fast system try Xubuntu on a newer system like a my Gateway MX6440 Laptop (1.8Ghz Turion64 with a gig of RAM) and you’ll be amazed at how fast Linux can run.
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Linux and Wireless is currently a pain in the arse. Some wireless vendors are hip to Linux and others could care less. To get around the this issue Linux hackers and some vendors have created dirvers or hacks to get Linux and wifi in the sama bed.

This page is my resource and links page for trying to get wifi working on my Gateway MX6440 laptop which has a poorly supported Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02). At some point I am going to buy either a USB Wifi, a PCMCIA Wifi Card or a miniPCI Wifi card.
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I found this post at the Ubuntu forums and it worked for me:

Ok, so there are other tutorials out there for the other 43xx cards, but from my experience, none of them have worked with the specific 4318 card. This way i will explain below is the only way i have gotten my 4318 card to work with 6.06

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