I have seen many posts on the Internet asking whether the Linksys usb wusb11v4 can be used in Slax Linux to provide wireless network access.  The Linksys wusb11v4 is a low cost wireless usb device.

The answer is yes, as that is what I am using to post this article.  How to do it ….  read on below.

I followed the normal Linux approach of using ndiswrapper to wrap the windows drivers from the installation disk. I knew that the windows drivers worked as they had been tested on a windows 2000 machine. The main difference to the approach adopted by most other commentators related to the path for the windows drivers.

I suspect that the error message often received saying that the driver is invalid relates to the path to the files.  When you advise ndiswrapper that the driver file to use is wusb11v4.inf you should remember that this inf file also points to the other wusb11v4 driver files.  If they are not in the Linux path they will not be found and an error will result.

So I suggest you use this approach ….      

1. Boot with Slax

2. Use a Linux file manager, say Konqueror, to copy the wusb11v4 windows drivers from your hard disk / floppy / cd to a drive in the Linux system say /tmp/drivers

3. Open a terminal window

4. cd /tmp/drivers

5. ndiswrapper -i WUSB11v4.inf

6. ndiswrapper -m

7. modprobe ndiswrapper

8. ifconfig wlan0 up

You should now have wireless network access.  The wusb11v4 is an effective wireless device.  It has a very long range when unobstructed and can deliver a strong connection within the home environment even through several walls. 

There may be better ways to do this but this seems to work and I suspect it overcomes the path issue where the wusb11v4 windows drivers are not found but ndiswrapper and modprobe are.

I often find simple ways to achieve success when installing software or hardware such as this wusb11v4.  They may not be elegant but if they get the job done and a 5 minute task stays a five minute task then I am happy.