Here is how to get your WMP54G v4 Linksys WiFi PCI card working in Linux

There are some other friendly articles out on the net which walk you through how to do it, but they do not provide you with the drivers themselves. Please note that the drivers I am posting is for the v4 model of the WiFi PCI card. I will also outline steps to get the drivers to your specific model.

Previous models of the WMP54G PCI card had used the Broadcom chipset, which refuses to make drivers for Linux. This being said, you would have to use NDISWRAPPER to install and manage your Windows drivers (.inf) in a Linux environment.

The newer v4 mode of the WiFi card uses the Rt2500 drivers. There are drivers on the net that claim that they have ported the drivers to be native in Linux, but they require lots more work to get the same end result. I'm sure there are slight benefits of using the Linux drivers, but ultimately, if it works, it works.

Here are the Drivers themselves, or you can download the attachment at the bottom.

Here is the process once you have downloaded the drivers: 

1. Once you have downloaded the drivers, extract them to your desktop
2. Open up a terminal window
1. su (gain root level access)
2. cd (change directory) to your ~/Desktop/Drivers/Drivers/ directory.
3. Now type "ls" just to make sure that you have the Rt2500.INF file and the rt2500.sys file.
4. Next, you type "ndiswrapper -i Rt2500.INF" -- I would use tab completion to locate the Rt2500.INF file because Linux is case-sensitive.
5. Once you hit return, it should say "Rt2500.INF driver installed"
6. To verify you can type "ndiswrapper -l" and it should list your newly installed Rt2500 driver.

Now your driver is installed onto the system, however the system doesn't automatically know how to utilize the ndiswrapper driver.

Depending on your system this part will vary, but the important step is that you will be telling your operating system that your wireless card will be using the ndiswrapper module.

In OpenSuSe, you go to YaST (Control Panel). Then Network Devices, followed by Network Card. Here you will see the list of network interface cards that are installed on your machine including the existing Linksys Wireless card. However to utilize the ndiswrapper, you must add another card to that list.

1. Click Add
2. Choose "Wireless" under Device Type
3. Then under Module Name type "ndiswrapper"

Then continue through the wizard leaving all the default options alone. Thats basically it. If you want, you can highlight the old entry for your Linksys Wireless adapter that the system installed for you, and your system will now be using the new adapter you created with the Rt2500 drivers using ndiswrapper.

In other systems, you basically have to follow the same procedures, just using whatever your distribution uses to control network adapters. As long as you can tell it to use the "ndiswrapper" module, you should be fine.

Good luck, and if you run into any trouble, feel free to write me, or better yet, post it on my forum so other users can review your questions and comments.

As promised, this is how I got those drivers I zipped up for you:

First, I had to look at the PCI card itself to note the version of the card I was using. Previously I had assumed I was using a 2.0 card, and those drivers used the broadcom chipset thus, it didn't work. Upon further inspection I noticed it was v4.0.

I then went to www.Linksys.com, clicked on support -> Drivers, then chose the model WMP54G v4.

The drivers came in a self extracting .EXE file, which means unless you have WINE configured properly in Linux, you're going to need a Windows machine to extract the files you need. Luckily, for me I have multiple computers here in my office. I downloaded the drivers to my desktop, extracted them to a temporary location, then zipped the contents of the "Drivers" directory that came out of the self extracting drivers file itself.

I then uploaded the .zip to my Linux machine, and moved it to my desktop.

After that, I used the steps described above to get it working.

Note:

While doing some research online, I found a company called Linuxant.com which has an automatedWindows driver installer which gives you a GUI interface via a web browser in order to install the right Windows drivers. The problem with this, is that they only give you a 30 day free trial, and after that they want you to pay $20 to buy the software.

What I found funny was that all their product does, is give you the web interface to upload the windows drivers for you. It doesn't even download the appropriate drivers for you. So ultimately, you still have to find the right Windows drivers, and then you still have to install them somehow. Personally, installing them using ndiswrapper was easier... and FREE!

Good luck, and enjoy