NDIS wrapper vs Kernel module?

Question

I have a small issue. I have a computer running Linux (currently Ubuntu) that has a USB wireless adapter. The adapter is a Cisco AE2500 Dual Band Wireless-N. I cannot get this adapter to work on any version of Linux I have tried (Fedora 16 - 18, Ubuntu 10 - 13). After doing some reading lots of people were saying to use NDIS wrapper to make the adapter function. But NDIS wrapper to me sounds like a WINE for Linux drivers. Is it something I am going to spend hours beating my head into the table over or is it something that can be trusted in production environments? I realize that if I could find the correct driver I would not need NDIS wrapper but it seems this is a long standing issue.

Any insight please?

Answer 1

nds wrapper has been out a long time and lots of work has been done. I would say it is reliable. The most important thing for drivers is the kernel version. The newer the version the more drivers it has and the more bugs that have been worked out.

uname -r

Will tell you what kernel version you have. The current version is 3.8.6.

if available also try

update-pciids

reboot and see if that changes anything. Otherwise you will have to use nds wrapper.

I googled your device and several users have got it working with nds wrapper.