This is unsupported, but will work

Ever since I installed Fedora Core 3 I couldn't get my Dell Truemobile 1300 mini-pci wlan card to work. It needs ndiswrapper and Broadcom windows driver to work but, unfortunately, the kernel works with 8k pages and the Windows driver expect 4k pages (whatever that may be). This makes the Windows drivers not work at all, it seems this can even crash your kernel...

After a couple of days I decided to buy a new wlan card, but I had these requirements:

• native linux support, no ndiswrapper

• at least 54mbit/s support

• mini-pci

• should fit Dell Inspiron 5150

After some careful research I found two candidates * <a href="http://support.intel.com/support/wireless/wlan/pro2200bg/index.htm">Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG</a> * <a href="http://www.tijdhof.com/product_info.php?cPath=30_74_55&amp;products_id=149">Senao 5354MP+A2</a>

The Intel has two problems, it is not readily available and is only supposed to be used on Centrino hardware and my Inspiron is NOT a Centrino based laptop. The Senao is expensive, around EUR 100 compared to the Intel's EUR 35. I liked the Senao because they are supposed to be very high quality. But for the price difference I decided to take the gamble.

The result is: A Dell Inspiron 5150 just works with the Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG. I can now remove the LAN cables from my livingroom again! The only difficult part was finding the <a href="http://ipw2200.sourceforge.net/firmware.php">binary firmware</a> and copying it to /lib/firmware.