Thanks to the incompetence of my local ISP, I'm currently internet-less at home All I have is limited access at work. So what would be great is if I could carry home the required bits and pieces and some step-by-step instructions, get the wireless working, and then try to grab a wireless network from somewhere. Is this a realistic goal or does it require lots of trial-and-error, fiddling, tweaking, getting some other piece of software, etc etc? I've heard about ndiswrapper nightmares but have never yet had the pleasure myself.

What I've got is a Dell 510m laptop with centrino processor (ie, integrated wireless from Intel). Alas I don't have the exact model numbers to hand, but I can get them as long as I know what and how. I'm running 2007 Spring with KDE. I've never used the wireless network either with Mandriva or Debian Etch or XP. I wouldn't mind whether it works in Mandriva or Debian but don't want to connect the XP.

In the repositories I can see the following rpms which look like they might be useful:

Is there anything else I'm likely to need? Can I take the proprietary binary bit from my XP partition (assuming it's there somewhere?) or do I have to hunt for my install CD?

Any other common gotchas (disabling in BIOS / incompatibilities etc) ?

Wireless was automatically set up for me in 2008.0 and 2008.1 when selecting the wizard, don't know about versions prior to 2008. You do need the one version though as the intel chips do require non-free firmware (also available in the non-free repos)

I did install from 2007.1 One, but have never tried setting the wireless up. Actually I do have 2008.1 One on CD, I could try that- but then I'm limited to whatever is already on the One CD. If I need non-free stuff I'd need to know what to get so I can take it home... I see ipw* and madwifi*, are those the kind of things you mean?
I thought that everything was free apart from the binaries which I can borrow from XP.

i don't have mandriva here so I don't know about the package names for the firmware but iirc they had firmware in their package names, look for the packages and get the ones for intel if you have an intel wireless. Firmware is something different than driver, it get loaded by the chipsets themselves not the OS (so it's OS independent but chipset dependent)

ipw* and iwl* are drivers for intel wireless chipsets but you will also need the firmware though on a standard install of 2008.0 or .1 they are already installed by default

madwifi is for atheros wireless chipsets?

I see the following for 2007.1:
So what happens with the firmware, do I need to do anything special to load the firmware somewhere or will it just be used as long as the rpm is installed?

it should all be done automatically

That's it, but I would suggest downloading them from the plf, here:
2007.1/non-free/release/binary/i586/

Their rpms contain more firmware versions.

That should be all you need for the 2100, 2200, and 2915. You could determine which one you have from dmesg, then install the proper rpm. Then use your gui network connections to set it up.

However if you have a 3945, you are going to need some dkms and kernel stuff. That will prove to be more of a challenge (PITA) for you to do without a connection.

Thanks for the link, however I just see the same four rpms I listed above (although with slightly different version numbers). I'll take them all home and see what happens Along with the two ndiswrapper ones.
I also see lots of dkms- rpms in main, but by the sounds of it it'll be better if I don't need them

Expect frustrated posts from me again tomorrow morning!!

Thank you Mandriva!
Works like a charm!

Congrats! Welcome to wireless!