Ethernet Driver Question

On 22 Mar 2006, in the Usenet newsgroup comp.os.linux.misc, in article

Not only will Knoppix won't detect it - we won't either, as there isn't enough information to tell us anything about the card. Start with a manufacturer's name and model number, then mention your kernel, and what the boot scripts show relating to this card. If it's a PCI card, the applicable couple of lines from 'lspci -vv' that relate specifically to the card would also help.

Unlikely, but the answer really is "that depends". Most of the vendor supplied drivers tend to be for older kernels (or at least older distributions). "Red Hat" supplied kernels ranging from 1.2.11 back in 1995 on up through 2.6.15-1 in the latest Fedora 5. For "binary" drivers, these are usually compiled for very specific distribution kernels such as "2.2.16-22" (the "out-of-box" kernel for RH 7.0 and these may not even work with the updated kernels used by that same distribution (in the case of RH 7.0, 2.2.19, 2.2.22, and 2.2.24 over it's life). These also have only a slim chance of working with other distributions, because each one knows how to build a better kernel than those "other guys", and they each "improve it" in different and often incompatible ways.

On the other hand, a modern kernel already comes with a surprising number of built-in network drivers, and your problem really is just figuring out which one that might be, and how to tell your kernel to use that one. So, let's start with those questions above - what card are we talking about?

Old guy