Best wireless card for 13.04

**dferriman** · June 13th, 2013

I'm building a new desktop and it will be too far away from the router to plug into the internet. I was wondering what wireless cards you guys might recommend. I'm not looking for the cheapest or the most expensive, I'm looking for the best one or the best options. Thanks!

**dferriman** · June 13th, 2013

I found this one on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/TP-LINK-TL-WN9...pr_product_top

But I'm not sure how well it will work with the latest Ubuntu. The one I had planed to use worked fine on 12.10 but doesn't work on 13.04. I don't want to buy another one and have the same issue. Does anyone use this one by chance?

**ahallubuntu** · June 14th, 2013

~

**dferriman** · June 14th, 2013

Originally Posted by ahallubuntu

Why don't you try to get your old one to work in 13.04? Have you posted a thread on it?

I spent a day working on it, every "how to" and blog post just said to give up. I need a more powerful one anyway. I'm just going to start buying cards and seeing what works. I don't want a PC I have to hack, if I'm building this thing for Ubuntu there is no reason why I shouldn't get one that will just work out of the box. My plan is to then write a blog post with a list so others know what will just work. I can find lists of parts for everything but the wireless card. It's like the holy grail of computer parts for Linux for some reason. I was hoping that at least one person that saw this would have one that worked in their PC. The fact that over 100 people have looked at this thread and none of them have a wireless card that just work, in my mind, really speaks to the problem.

**dferriman** · June 20th, 2013

Just in case someone finds this thread via Google or something, the card I linked to above worked out of the box. In fact, it worked better on Ubuntu in my tests than it did in Windows. That said, I didn't get full signal strength so it's range could be better. But if you want a card that works out of the box, no tutorials, then the TP-LINK TL-WN951N will get the job done.

**kurt18947** · June 20th, 2013

I've tried a few and if you're happy with N150 speed, TrendNet's TEW-649UB or other RealTek 8192SU based adapter seems to work very well. Plug 'n' play, good signal strength and range, good throughput speed. Manufacturers have a habit that irritates me. They'll change chipsets on the same model number, just change the version number or letter. There's no way to know which version you're getting until you open the package.

Dlink did this with their DWA-131. The orignal used the RTL8192SU chipset and was a twin to the TrendNet adapter. Worked great. They switched to another RealTek chip, called it ver. B that was NOT plug 'n' play. It'd be nice to be able to tell the difference prior to purchase but I don't know of a way.