Fedora Wireless Woes

I was called to do a contract job on converting an office's computers to the Linux-based Operating System, Fedora Core. As part of the job, I had to install a PCI Wireless Network Card, specifically a Linksys WMP54G, on Fedora Core.

So, thinking that it couldn't be that difficult, I set about plugging the PCI Card in, and booting into Fedora's Gnome Desktop. Okay, I don't see the familiar new hardware found dialog, or anything like it. Turns out that the drivers for the PCI Card were not compatible at first, unless I used the Linuxant Driverloader, which gave a 30-day trial. After a bit of messing around (Three days worth), the drivers were finally installed, and the wireless interface, eth1, was detected within the system.

Thanks to some help of friends, I got as far as the drivers, but no further, because for some strange reason, the terminal would not show a Network Connected signal. Add in another day of troubleshooting, only to realize that KDE had a wifi configuration manager called kwifimanager. I switched to KDE, launched the manager, and was happy to see a usable User Interface with FIND NETWORK in a big button, and any network details on the right. Anticipating a change of my luck, I clicked FIND NETWORK, only to be told that No Networks could be found within range, yet my Windows XP Laptop was sitting besides the Fedora Core computer and I was browsing away on Wifi, with a signal strength of Very Good.

Smelling a rat, I switched to the backup hard disk with XP Pro, made sure the wireless PCI Card was plugged in, and sure enough, in less then two minutes flat, XP had installed the drivers for the card, with no need for the CD that came with the wireless adapter, as well as detecting the office network, and asked me to key in the passphrase. In another five seconds, Google was on the screen. All this took less then two minutes, and told me that there was something wrong with Fedora since it couldn't detect the wireless network where XP did.

Of course, you can argue, Microsoft has loads of market share, developers, and professionals, it is not a community driven project like Linux is, and as a side effect, it is not as user friendly. But this is the very reason why so many users prefer to use Windows. And I'm relatively sure some of the comments here will be Linux users blasting me for my ineptness with Linux which is why I'm having so much problems. But the point boils down to a fact if a general computer user like me has trouble installing and working on Linux, what is to say any other computer user will be able to work Linux without self-learning or a manual book?