Wireless NIC for LINUX box

[mr_yogi]

Having just gone Wireless I now need a wireless NIC for my LINUX pc, can anyone recommend one with LINUX (preferably good ) support out of the box.

It hasn't got to be best NIC in the world (in fact the cheaper the better) 'cause it's not used all the time and the PC is only 6 meters from the router.

Thanks

[thepassenger]

6 meters from the router?
Considering my experience with Linux and Wireless devices.... your better off with a cable.

Seriously.

But cheap n' cheerful... throw anything at it and hope Ndiswrapper and wpa_supplicant can cope with it.

[mr_yogi]

Thanks but cables are not an option as the router is downstairs in the lounge and the PC is in the back bedroom upstairs

If it's too difficult I was considering just using a crossover cable from my the linux box to my PC (WinXP) as they are in thwe same room. But I was rather hoping there were NIC's that came with linux drivers on the CD

[thepassenger]

Ahh no. Practically all manufacturers don't supply Linux drivers for their cards on the CD.
However, Linux does provide native drivers for a wide range of chipsets (Intel, Prism and ohh... one other one that Madwifi deals with); however Linux also has a 3rd party program you can download that will allow most Windows drivers to be used. This is called ndiswrapper.

I know Gnome's inbuilt network manager can deal with WEP (fair assumption that KDE's one can) but you'll need wpa_supplicant to handle WPA/WPA-PSK.