Linux help?

[telecom_goddess]

Ok I have a usb wireless adapter, one of the tiny generic ones that I'm trying to get installed on a linux box. I admit I'm lost as to how to load the drivers. They are sitting on the desktop for the moment. It's Mint 10. Currently hard wired to the router.

I feel dumb but help

[Chromatix]

The drivers it came with are probably just for Windows. Linux needs it's own kind of drivers - which are usually included in the system or easily installable via the package system.

Mint 10 is quite old now - the current version is 13. If you upgrade that (while still wired in), it should have more drivers for newer devices available. Maybe it will "just work" after that.

There are instructions for updating Mint here: http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/2

[telecom_goddess]

The drivers are specifically for linux but yeah the version may be old. I got the machine about a year ago from a friend. The machine itself is about 10 years old, but a linux upgrade should be doable yes?

Thanks for the link.

[dougall]

The upgrade will be a live cd so you will be able to try it without affecting mint 10 but remember that mint 10 has dropped off support as of April 10th http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopi...=99411&start=0 so
you need to upgrade anyway and 13 is a long term support version that will get 3 years support rather than 18 months.

[Chromatix]

Ten year old computers are still plenty powerful enough to run even modern Linux distros. They might not keep up with the latest video codecs and games, but that's normal.

The most you would ever need to do is fit more RAM and a bigger hard disk - but if you're already running Mint 10 that shouldn't be necessary either.

[telecom_goddess]

I will give it a shot when I have time, maybe this weekend maybe not lol.

[Darkwolf]

You can also try ndiswrapper if you have windows drivers for that adaptor

[Chromatix]

Ndiswrapper really shouldn't be necessary these days. This adapter apparently includes Linux drivers on the disc, but installing one raw isn't as easy as it sounds. Better to let the distro take care of the details.

[dougall]

if you open a terminal window and enter the command lsusb you will get a list of everything connected to the usb system you can find your device from the description text most of the time here is my usb wireless network card as an example.

Bus 001 Device 008: ID 050d:705e Belkin Components F5D7050 Wireless G Adapter v5000 [Realtek RTL8187B]

If you plug your device in last it normally is the last item on the list but you could also just run it again with the device removed and see what is missing from the list then all you need to do is enter the ID number into a search engine with the words linux drivers eg. "050d:705e linux drivers"

If you cut and paste the contents of lsusb into a message we can help you further.

Mint is ubuntu with a different user interface but the drivers you need are identical to ubuntu so you can get help from the ubuntu and mint forums.

As the computer is old you might consider using the xfce version of mint 13 as that needs less power.