Q I am trying to set up my system to use my Belkin USB wireless stick with ndiswrapper. The notes tell me I need a certain kernel as a minimum. I'm a new user, so can you tell me how I find this information? Also, can you give me any advice on setting up this item?
A There are various GUI tools that will tell you which kernel you're running: the KDE Control Centre shows it as 'release' on the startup page, or you can use your distro's package manager to find the version of the kernel package (some distros call it 'linux'). The simplest way is to open a terminal and type one of:
uname --kernel-release uname -r
You may not need to use ndiswrapper as some Belkin wireless devices have native support. In this case run:
sudo lsusb
in a terminal to find out more about your device. Then search Google or your distro's forums for information on this device. You may also find details of which driver would be best for you to use at http://qbik.ch/usb/devices. If there's no native driver for your device you'll have to use ndiswrapper. The most important point to remember when doing this is to use the driver that came with the device. Manufacturers have a habit of changing the internals of devices while leaving the model number the same, so a driver for an apparently identical device may be useless. If your distro (you don't mention what you're using) has a tool for configuring wireless devices, use this rather than trying so set it up manually. Some, such as SUSE's Yast, will also set up ndiswrapper for you.