Broadcom, Intel or Atheros?

[nick_h]

I am considering buying a cheap mini-PCI wireless card for my Dell laptop. There seem to be three reasonable options:

Dell TrueMobile 1370

Lower power version of the 1350 which was originally an option for my laptop.
Based on the Broadcom BCM4318 chipset.
Supported by the b43 driver - link
Is the older bcm43xx driver now obsolete?
Should support my LED and Wireless disable button.

Intel Pro 2200BG

The Intel Linux ipw2200 driver is maintained by Intel.
http://ipw2200.sourceforge.net/

Atheros AR5006XS

Based on the AR5414 chipset.
Supported by the ath5k driver - link
However it says: "Support for newer devices like AR5414 and PCI express is pretty new and might not work so well."
Also supported by the madwifi driver - link


All three look like they should work out of the box with Hardy, but I have seen a few threads describing problems especially with Broadcom chipsets.

I would prefer a native driver and it would obviously be good if the LED and disable button worked.

Does anyone have experience with any of these cards?

Any comments or suggestions?

[Ayuthia]

I am considering buying a cheap mini-PCI wireless card for my Dell laptop. There seem to be three reasonable options:

Dell TrueMobile 1370

Lower power version of the 1350 which was originally an option for my laptop.
Based on the Broadcom BCM4318 chipset.
Supported by the b43 driver - link
Is the older bcm43xx driver now obsolete?
Should support my LED and Wireless disable button.

Intel Pro 2200BG

The Intel Linux ipw2200 driver is maintained by Intel.
http://ipw2200.sourceforge.net/

Atheros AR5006XS

Based on the AR5414 chipset.
Supported by the ath5k driver - link
However it says: "Support for newer devices like AR5414 and PCI express is pretty new and might not work so well."
Also supported by the madwifi driver - link


All three look like they should work out of the box with Hardy, but I have seen a few threads describing problems especially with Broadcom chipsets.

I would prefer a native driver and it would obviously be good if the LED and disable button worked.

Does anyone have experience with any of these cards?

Any comments or suggestions?

From what I have seen, the 4318 card has not fared out too well in Hardy. There have been quite a few people that cannot get it to work with b43, ndiswrapper, and it does not work with the wl driver. The bcm43xx driver still exists in 2.6.24 but I am pretty sure that it is removed in the 2.6.27 kernel. I have not seen or heard much about the 4318 card working/not working in Intrepid though.

[nick_h]

Thanks. From reading other threads I wasn't very keen on the Broadcom.

Has anyone had any luck with the Atheros or Intel cards?

Maybe I'll just try to get a very cheap one from eBay.

[ahumeniy]

I have a ThinkPad with the ThinkPad 802.11 A/B/G miniPCI card (based on Atheros) and it works out of the box with the athk driver.

[nick_h]

Thanks. The Atheros does look like a good choice.