Hi On 2015-05-09, JohnT wrote: > I bought a newer 64-bit pc to replace this old 32-bit system and want to > install Debian on it. I knew that 6.0.10 didn't seem to have Netgear > wireless-through-USB support, so I tried 7.6.0 and 8.0 and found that they > didn't recognize the Netgear hardware either. The 8.0 installer's hardware There is no such thing as a "Netgear wireless-through-USB" device, there are dozens withs vastly different internals. Therefore you'd need to specify your particular device much more accurate before anyone can help you. Even giving the model name is often inconclusive, as multiple vendors (including Netgear) tend to switch horses between different hardware revisions of the same model, but "lsusb" combined with the model name might give an approximation (even that isn't 100% sure, as multiple vendors tend to re-use USB IDs for different hardware). > detection reported my wireless device as a mass storage device, as I > recall. Netgear USB wireless devices have been around for several years > and are commonly used. I bought mine at Walmart. Several USB wlan cards actually do contain a tiny usb-storage partition, which often contains drivers for windows and sometimes also configuration data. These devices need a modeswitch to turn of the usb-storage partition to free the USB endpoint and then turn on the wlan functionality. Some drivers can do this modeswitch on their own, without userspace assisting, like e.g. ar5523, zd1211rw et al - others need a usb-modeswitch to accomplish this in userspace instead (e.g. some ar9170/ carl9170 devices). > I found that Ubuntu works with my Netgear device, though I am having > problems finding a mirror that still has that "longterm support" version The usb-modeswitch package doesn't provide a udeb, to hook itself into d-i (the Debian installer), therefore affected wlan cards requiring this kind of special handholding won't be supported automatically (or at all for the time being) - you might be lucky by trying eject on the usb-storage device node though; make sure to have the needed firmware available before trying this (manual) mode-switch. > available. And Mageia 4.1 works fine with Netgear, but there are some > things in their software selection I don't like. I would rather be using > just a simple upgrade of 6.0.10, which I find very satisfactory in most > respects, better than 7.x. I'm rather confident that the installed Debian system will support your device just fine - once you install its firmware and the usb-modeswitch package; debian-live based live media might as well, provided you install usb-modeswitch and firmware before connecting your wlan card. What won't work right now is doing a (partial-) netinstall using such a wlan card. > If you would add Netgear wireless support to 8.0, 7.x and 6.x, I'm sure > many users would appreciate it. I can't speak for release and d-i teams, but adding a new udeb for usb-modeswitch and d-i integration for already released Debian versions doesn't sound very likely. However you can ask the usb-modeswitch maintainers to support this for stretch/ Debian 9~, by filing a bugreport against src:usb-modeswitch and suggesting them to add a udeb to their package. Disclaimer: While I have access to several wlan cards doing an internal modeswitch inside the kernel module, I don't own any requiring external help via usb-modeswitch myself and therefore won't be able to test this. Regards Stefan Lippers-Hollmann
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