Well, well, well. It seems like the NetworkManager application on Fedora 10 seems to have matured to the point that connecting to an Encrypted Wireless network "just works". I cannot describe how pleased that I am with this development.
Unfortunately, my Dell D620 laptop came with a cheap internal wireless card (the Broadcom Corporation Dell Wireless 1390 WLAN Mini-PCI Card) that is not recognized by Fedora. If you come across a similar issue, you can use ndiswrapper to get the card working (see my Fedora 9 Wireless page), but I find ndiswrapper extremely temperamental, and found it easier to simply purchase a PCMCIA Wireless card and pop it into my laptop whenever I am using the Linux partition.
Using RPM Fusion (if possible)
If you can avoid using ndiswrapper, if at all possible, I highly encourage it. This is primarily because ndiswrapper tends to conflict with the kmod-ntfs package on an interrupt level (you can therefore use one or the other, but not both at the same time). In addition, the Windows-based wireless cards tend to be kind of cruddy. The built in wireless card on my laptop has a tendency of dropping connections, and more recently, would not turn on when using Linux unless I first booted into Windows. As a result, I finally broke down and purchased a Netgear WG511T 108 Mbps Wireless PC Card that can plug into my PCMCIA slot to make life much easier. I also purchased a Netgear WGT624SC Super G Wireless Router, since I was tired of having to disconnect the Ethernet connection from my Desktop computer at home whenever I needed to use the DSL line for my laptop. Before purchasing the devices, however, I verified that I would be able to get them operational without too much trouble in Fedora. A simple Google search on "WG511T Fedora", and a few clicks later led me to the following web pages:
RPM Fusion supports a kernel module for the card via madwifi. Getting the card up and running amounts to the following steps:
1. Install the current kernel-devel package
Use yum to install the current kernel-devel package:
~>
sudo yum install kernel-devel
Press
'y'
when
prompted to install the program.2. Use RPM Fusion to install madwifi and kmod-madwifi
Assuming that you have the RPM Fusion repository setup (if not, see the Repository page), yum can easily be used to install the driver and kernel mod:
~>
sudo yum install madwifi kmod-madwifi
Press 'y'
when
prompted to install the programs and any dependencies.3. Reboot the Computer
Reboot the computer, and make sure the wireless card is in the PCMCIA slot. The kernel module will be loaded during the boot process, and after logging into Gnome, NetworkManager will automatically detect any Wireless networks that are available. If the network is encrypted, it will prompt you for the password, and will store the password automatically for future use. Once you type it in, an encrypted connection should automatically be established.
If you do not want to use NetworkManager, I suggest heading over to my Fedora 9 Wireless page and reading about wpa_supplicant.
References
Most of the information regarding madwifi and wpa_supplicant and was drawn from the following web pages: