loading Wireless drivers from a LiveCD

[Darkelve]

For me, Linux has reached the point at which it could perfectly replace Windows on my brothers and fathers laptop for the things they use it for. But there's a problem in that we are using a home wireless network with DHCP and the cards for the laptop are "Intel Pro/Wireless 2011b PCMCIA".

 

It doesn't work with the standard drivers included with the distro's I tried on it. After some research, I think this is the one I need: "spectrum24t_cs" , since orinoco gives a beep and then an error message:

 

"

cardmgr(70): starting, version is 3.2.5

socket 0: Intel Pro/Wireless 2011

cardmgr(70): executing "modprobe orinoco_cs"

eth0: failed to initialize firmware (err=-16)

"

 

First problem: I can't find the driver anywhere on the web

 

Second problem: I would prefer to test it with a LiveCD before testing. Actually, Mepis works very good with my brothers (old, armada v300 with only 64MB ram) laptop, Knoppix too, rest of them: not. So what would I have to do in order to test with a LiveCD if PCMCIA card is working? Put in on Windows partition? Put it on floppy disk?

 

Third problem: like I said, my brothers laptop is old; what distro and window manager should I install? I'm thinking about IceWM (fast and very similar to Windoze) or XFCE ('weirder' for Windozers, but fastest). It has this cray thing that at the start or in the middle of the installation some distro's won't even install!? Is it the low memory, would be strange 'cause vectorLinux had the problem also. That said, if a LiveCD works well enough, why install anyway?

 

 

Sorry for my many questions...

 

 

Oh, and this:

http://lists.samba.org/archive/wireless/2002-May/001303.html

http://pcmcia-cs.sourceforge.net/ftp/SUPPORTED.CARDS

 

I don't really know what it all means, but maybe it can help you get started.