Penguin

The Atheros range of chipsets are made by Atheros Communications. There is good support for them in linux through the MADWiFi project.

Linux support

Some distros will support this out-of-the-box -- for example, in Ubuntu 5.04 and later, the packaged kernel and the linux-restricted-modules package provides support.

If your distro does not distribute non-Free drivers, you will need to install the driver from source.

You will need to download and compile an external module (not part of the vanilla linux kernel) from http://madwifi.sourceforge.net. But you should still have a kernel with CONFIG_NET_RADIO support (as described on the WirelessChipsets page). When this module is loaded, ifconfig -a should show a device called "ath0". Note that this driver also has a binary-only component which will taint your kernel.

Resources:

Sites with lists of Atheros based cards:


Part of CategoryWireless