FreeBSD: does the distro support my USB wireless adapter?

Soresger · Sep 4, 2010

Hello, my name is Soresger Devrim.

I want to know whether my Belkin USB Adapter is supported by the FreeBSD distribution.

Belkin USB Adapter RTl8191S F5D8053 V6

Thanks in advance.

sk8harddiefast · Sep 4, 2010

Check this: http://www.freebsd.org/releases/8.0R/hardware.html and this http://www.freebsd.org/releases/8.0R/hardware.html#WLAN

Soresger · Sep 4, 2010

It appears to be supporting Belkin F5D7000 v3 and Belkin F5D7010 v2 but I can not see mine listed.

Caliante · Sep 5, 2010

Soresger said:
It appears to be supporting Belkin F5D7000 v3 and Belkin F5D7010 v2 but I can not see mine listed.

I think it is mostly listed by chipsets, not by consumer product names (I think). So in that case you would need to find out the chipset in your adapter, and see if that one is supported by FreeBSD.

Beastie · Sep 5, 2010

This may sound like a stupid question, but why not simply test FreeBSD on that machine and see if it detects and is able to use the device?
By "my Belkin USB Adapter", I understand you already bought it, so testing should not be a problem.

aragon · Sep 5, 2010

If you supply the vendor and product IDs of the device, someone can check with more certainty.

Soresger · Sep 5, 2010

Hi.

The chipset seems to be Ralink rt2870.

Zare · Sep 6, 2010

FreeBSD is no bloody "distro", it's an operating system.
Rant off. Regarding your WLAN card, http://repo.or.cz/w/ralink_drivers.git .

Soresger · Sep 8, 2010

Zare said:
FreeBSD is no bloody "distro", it's an operating system.
Rant off. Regarding your WLAN card, http://repo.or.cz/w/ralink_drivers.git .

Thanks for correcting my mistake. it is appreciated.

You might believe that I have done no research myself and I have just come to the FreeBSD forums and asked for others to do my job but no way; believe it or not I have searched a good couple of times and I was not successful in obtaining the proper drivers for the operating system* FreeBSD.

Thank you

Zare · Sep 10, 2010

http://repo.or.cz/w/ralink_drivers/rt2860_fbsd8.git/tree

Have you tried fetching and building driver from above link?

kpedersen · Sep 10, 2010

Zare said:
FreeBSD is no bloody "distro", it's an operating system.

Hmm, I was going to have the same jolly rant but perhaps he named it "distro" as in short for distribution. As in Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD)

Soresger · Sep 11, 2010

kpedersen said:
Hmm, I was going to have the same jolly rant but perhaps he named it "distro" as in short for distribution. As in Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD)

That is right but never mind.