USB Wireless Dongles and Ubuntu

[Simon]

I can't offer much advice, but you always can see the MAC address of
the router, authenticated or not. Unfortunately, you may find that
ndiswrapper is easier to use than the native driver, but I would be
partial to the native one if possible.

Also:
http://linux-wless.passys.nl/query_part.php?brandname=MSI
http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=005265&cid=NT.541

I've had mixed results with Ralink (r2500, good, rt2600, bad), but
their attitude is pretty good, they release open source drivers.
Where they could improve would be to foster a community around
development, and develop their drivers in the open instead of
developing first before doing a big source drop.  Also, the OpenBSD
folks said that the code was basically a quick and dirty port of the
Windows driver.

Regardless, their attitude is much better than a lot of companies, and
the fact that they're supported in OpenBSD means that even the
firmware is redistributable, and they pass the Theo De Raadt test
(lol, see kerneltrap.org/node/7184).  I have a Broadcom chip, and
Linksys has released source code for their router firmware minus the
driver to the Broadcom chip on the router, that's how bad it is.
Ironically, the bcm43xx developers did a clean room reimplementation
of the driver, when one could argue that Linksys is legally obligated
to release the source.  Makes me mad to think about that.

Simon
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