Routing internet to linspire from MS Windows XP

[Golferman443]

Alright, i just got a computer in my room and put a OS called linspire which is linux, and I was wondering if I can route internet wirelessly from my main computer which has MS windows Xp, or If it cant be connected wirelessly can I do it with a wired cable, but i rather have it wirelessly. So just explain the best you guys can on how i can do that. Thanks

 

[kaymastah]

What kind of networking infrastructure do you have available? It is much easier to network Linux via a wire than wireless - drivers issue and incompatibility; Unfortunately many manufacturers are very resistant to requests for linux drivers, and to reverse engineer one is quite a task!

Another thing, it's not easy to really secure a wireless network. The standards are changing frequently and it will take a while before IEEE gets something truly established in that matter. By now it's whatever the manufacturer comes up with. Back to subject, for the more popular ways of coding wireless traffic like WPA, you will need even more work, getting wpa_supplicant to operate.

Try to make the windows box connect wirelessly to the router, and the Linspire box connect via cable. I'm not the greatest fan of Linspire but that's maybe because I haven't spend much time around it. For new users I would suggest Ubuntu, which is a very well organized Debian based distro. If you want to stick to KDE than Gnome, there's Kubuntu. One last thing about Gnome, is that there is a really good program for network management (both wired and wireless) called "nm-applet" which beautifully integrates with Gnome; more info at:

http://www.gnome.org/projects/NetworkManager/

If you have more questions concerning Linux, ask away. You can probably get some more help from my more linux savvy friends at mccglug.org

Enjoy Linux!

 

[Nodsu]

If your Linspire box has a working wireless, then you can do it with an ad-hoc wireless setup. Just google it - there are plenty of Windows-specific articles. You can't do the exact steps with Linspire, but the idea is the same.