Wireless networks and linux

[Ben Rogers]

On my computer, I have both WinXP and SUSE 9.3 installed. I have a Linksys wireless(-b) (usb) network card that is used for internet connection (not file or printer sharing) for the three PC's in my house. The network card, as you can see by my being able to post here, works fine for WinXP, however, even though SUSE recognized it (the third time it booted up), and it's (afaik) setup correctly, it just...doesn't work.

This is my first real go at Linux, so I'm not familiar enough with it to be able to help myself, and it seems I've correctly followed all the instructions in SUSE's help files. Can anyone help me out here, to get the network correctly working on SUSE? It'd be much appreciated.

(Note: I realize this has been asked elsewhere, and answered elsewhere, but I've not been able to find anything that helped me.)

[Stephen Philbin]

I take it you tried all the network devices stuff in YaST?

[Ben Rogers]

Yeah. By all accounts, it should be working, but I can't find anything about connecting to a network, or checking the connection (well, I've seen "0bps," but other than that...), and kinternet has the unpluggy icon. If n00bliness is a sin...

[Stephen Philbin]

Can't say I'd have any idea how to fix it really. I mean it could be anything. Needs drivers maybe, or might be that there's a passphrase or name setting somewhere that needs setting up. I know you have to set a name or something for my wireless access points on my secondary router (NETGEAR WGR 614v2). Mine's an ethernet based one though so you might not have to do it with yer USB one, but you never know.

Usually if I can't do something with Suse, then I copy and paste into google any unique error reports whatever I'm trying to use spits out at me. Any chance of using that line of investigation? Usually has me fixed pretty quick.

[Ben Rogers]

No...I'm not getting any errors; SUSE isn't telling me what parts wrong, or anything like that.

[Ben Rogers]

Right, well, basically f*ck Linux.

I removed all the configs I had, unplugged the adapter, rebooted, plugged it in, and then rebooted again. I follow all the default configs except for adding the SSID, and success, sort of, kinternet says it's connected. Linux freezes. I reboot. Black screen before KDE boots up? Freezes. Does this 3 more times, for a total of 7 my whole experience with Linux. I have never seen an OS go down so much; I thought Linux was supposed to be the stable one!

I don't know what's wrong with it...but I'm too lazy to put up with this. Maybe a few years from now I'll try again, but for now, screw this, I don't know about your experiences with it, but...*sigh*