Wireless in Linux/Music and DVDs

I've got a Linksys WPC11 (I think I dont wanna pop it out till I get to a land line or I'll loose connection...) in my laptop that I plan on using for FC5/ubuntu, and I was wondering if they came with support for this card (its 802.11b) or some generic driver? I remember when I put FC3 or 4 on it didn't detect it and I had a helluva time getting it on so I just gave up. also, do they come with software to watch DVDs? And can you rip CDs (I dont care to what format just as long as I can have a few CDs on here) to it and listen to them in either of these distros?
-thanks

 

I'm also looking at Suse 10.1, it looks really nice, I've got 9.2 and I didnt like that much at all, but 10.1 looks way better, I think I'm gonna try that out

 

Regarding wireless I found that: http://linux.oldcrank.com/tips/wpc11/
Is this a PCMCIA card? If yes, then PCMCIA has to be supported, too.

 

yup, thats the card and it is PCMCIA... well I DLed Suse 10.1 yesderday, and I'm gonna try installing it later today one I get my D820. Do I need any Special drivers for Intel Integrated Graphics (the original ones)?

 

No, you shouldn't need to fetch any drivers for the Intel graphics, they should included in the Linux distribution.

 

Wireless, not sure what chipset. It may or may not work.
DVD watching, no. That won't work out of the box except maybe with something like Linspire
CD ripping, easy. Should be able to rip by default to ogg from most distros

I prefer Ubuntu, as there's a ton of documentation out there, and it has a reasonably wide berth of hardware coverage.

 

Watching DVD's is simple: Install either mplayer, xine or vlc and it should be no prob. IMHO mplayer is best, but all are good.

Ripping CD's is also simple: Install grip (if you use a Gnome desktop), I forget the KDE one, but it should be installed by default in KDE. Another simple one is ripper-X.

Both SUSE and FC3 or FC4 have simple methods to install these programs, rpm, yast, yum, etc., use what you're familiar with.

Hope this helps.

 

With Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSuse and many other distributions you'll need to install libdvdcss to get video DVD playback. I'm not sure if you'll need to rebuild mplayer or xine against it or not, but if you do I'm sure someone has done so and packaged it for most distros.

Similarly, you probably won't have support for wmv, wma, mp3 and other questionable codecs. You can install the codec package at the mplayer site, or you can search for a package for your distribution. Ogg and flac are much superior, anyway

 

One libdvdcss is installed, mplayer, xine and VLC will work with encrypted DVDs no problem. They've been built against deCSS, but no distro is going to supply the library for fear of violating DMCA.

Codecs for mp3, wmv, wma etc. should also be available for your distro of choice... again, they're not supplied by default due to licensing issues.

 

jeffsmythe: In KDE, you can just browse to the AudioCD device and drag the files in the "ogg" or "mp3" folder over to your hard drive, and that rips it. Pretty slick.
TedJ: Thanks for clearing that up. I said "no" blanket because it was easier than explaining libdvdcss and how to find it, etc., and he asked if it came with software to watch DVD's.