[TriLUG] Failing at Ubuntu Wireless Adapter - The Epilogue

[Scott Chilcote]

Hello LUGers,

I have finally achieved "win" on my quest to get a functioning wireless 
adapter for Ubuntu Karmic, and I found what I consider to be an 
unusually good solution.

Thanks to Chess Griffin for the suggestion that I parse the reviews on 
Newegg.  That got things rolling.

I'd been looking for a USB wlan adapter in part because nearly all of 
the slots on the motherboard were used up.  What I discovered on Newegg 
was that they make wlan adapters that use those tiny PCI-Express x1 
slots that use up two of the ever diminishing number of slots on the 
motherboard these days.

Here's the one I got:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833320048&Tpk=PCE-N13

Also cool: it says "Linux Support" right on the box.  Began working 
immediately in Karmic with a strong signal reported, possibly due to the 
twin antennas.  I didn't have to mess with ndiswrapper or any separately 
distributed drivers.

Downside?  I discovered that X.org doesn't handle having the PCI ID of 
the graphics device change post-installation.

Inserting this card bumped my PCI-E graphics adapter from PCI:2:0:0 to 
3:0:0.  This number is generated into the xorg.conf file as the device's 
Busid.

For whatever reason, X.org can't tell that this has changed (at least on 
my system).  Even if you re-generate the file (one of Ubuntu's repair 
options), the Busid value continues to be set to the old ID.

It didn't take very long to figure out what was wrong, thanks to several 
people having already encountered this problem.  I edited the file 
manually to update the ID, and this restored the graphics.

All's good now.  Many thanks to Newegg and Chess for solving my problem!
http://trilug.org/~chilcote/images/misc/miso%20happy.png

   Scott C.