The TP-LINK TL-WN322G+ USB Wireless Network Card is supported very well in gnu/Linux with a builtin module zd1211rw now included in main linux kernel tree, thanks to the zd1211 project.
Full story »The TP-LINK TL-WN322G+ USB Wireless Network Card is supported very well in gnu/Linux with a builtin module zd1211rw now included in main linux kernel tree, thanks to the zd1211 project.
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J.B.Nicholson-Owens
15 years 17 weeks 6 days 4 hours ago
This device may require non-free firmware.
The ZD1211 USB WLAN Linux Driver website notes that ZyDAS has been very cooperative with the community. I'm glad to read this, far too many manufacturers are anything but friendly even with their own customers. Unfortunately it seems that the card might require what the site describes as "freely distributable firmware". Typically this means proprietary firmware which we can distribute at no charge.
Proprietary firmware is proprietary software and proprietary software cannot be used to run a computer completely in freedom. The FSF has a list of wireless cards and USB devices which work with the Atheros free software ath5k and ath9k drivers that require no firmware, thus posing no pressure to acquire and run non-free firmware.
I've run the ASUS WL-107g wireless LAN Card Bus adaptor and the SMC 2208USB USB ethernet (wired) adaptor on gNewSense GNU/Linux, so I'm sure they don't require non-free software to use. These devices are probably not the fastest network adaptors out there but most of the time I think most people need something akin to a 10-baseT connection for looking at websites and reading email. For that, these inexpensive devices (and many others) work fine.