Hello, I just ordered an IBM Thinkpad A21e. It has a (wired) LAN card, and 2 PCMCI slots, but no wireless card. It also comes with Windows 2000 (a bug which will soon be squashed).
Anyways, as I am going to be using this laptop with Wi-Fi, I decided to just buy a wireless card seperately. I have my eyes set on a Belkin card. However, I want to know some things about wireless with Debian: First of all, does anybody have any experience with Belkin? Any problems? I expect that I will have to use ndiswrapper and use Windows drivers. Will this mean I have to hold on deleting Windows, install the card and save the drivers to a CD or something similar? When the laptop can use both wired and wireless connections, how can I tell it something like: check the wired connection and if that fails, try wireless? How do I switch when it is on (I expect it is something like ifdown <WIRED> && ifup <WIRELESS>)? Also, how do I configure the wireless card to go to a certain hot spot? For example, if it needs a password. My school has a free Wi-Fi service without a password, but at home, my router is secure. Thanks in advance! -- Leonid Grinberg
