So im completely fed up with mr bill gates and wish to reformat and go into ubuntu 7.10 (gutsy). ive acquired an actual distro from the Netherlands (i live in AZ) and installed it, but come to find out it does not have the propitiatory drivers unlocked for my AGP nvidia fx 5200 (256mb), nor my lynksys wifi adapter (Model: WMP54GS). The biggest problem is i do not have access to a direct LAN. so everything has to be downloaded through xp until i can access wifi internet via gutsy. can anyone point me in the correct direction? I've been recommended NdisWrapper for installing windows drivers... I plan on attempting a gutsy reinstall again tonight as i reinstalled xp after realizing the complications. AMD Athlontm XP 2400+, MMX, 3DNow, ~2.0GHz Windows XP Pro/Corp 5.1, Build 2600 SP2 1280 mb of RAM Nvidia GeForce FX 5200 1-40gb 1-120gbD

Instead of reinstalling,,, You could just " dual boot " the Operating Systems, As for the problems with obtaining the Native proprietary drivers for Nvidia ,, You still should be able to boot into the desktop and just not " maybe " have 3d support, The linksys wifi adapter is probably a " Broadcom " chipset and will require a little bit of work to get going The best advice I believe , At this time , anyone would be able to give is to , First Head over to the ubuntu forums and search their forums for wifi posts , and or your particular wifi adapter , The Solution is Somewhat complicated , by not having a direct internet connection but still could be done , Dependency issues with programs may also be better, and more easily solved with software package managers and repositories, Sorry if this post doesn't seem to help much I've gone through several distro's of linux and various wifi cards and usb wifi adapters trying to find the " easier " one to set-up and install in Linux ,,, Most of the time It was " easier " with a direct connection from an ethernet cable to the computer ,, I've been trying to use Linux mostly full time now and Usually just use it ,, ( recently upgraded to fedora 8 from fedora 7 ) and just don't use wifi with it ( Yet ) ( live in an apartment complex and have had trouble with others trying to crack my wifi connection, and brute force attacks ) Ntfs file system will also cause a problem , ( reading and writing and will require another program to be installed ( ntfs3g " I believe it's called ) In that way with a dual boot system You may be able to download the files into a folder in XP and access them from Ubuntu ,,, when you choose to boot from it,,, ( fat32 support would be readily supported in ubuntu ) If your new to linux ,,, ( like I consider myself ) There's a lot to learn and , all in all , well worth the time spent,,, to go through and give it a shot , will however take some time and " Regretfully " will require dual booting to get the job done ( from what you have described as your situation ) Good Luck Huh !!! MSI 845e mb 1 gb ram and a p4 2.4n running fedora 7 xp ,win 2000 advanced server and win 98 SE alot to learn and I know so little !!!!

I've found SimplyMEPIS to be much more "WiFi friendly". I'm running v6.5 on one of my systems, but v7.0 was just released a few days ago. http://www.mepis.org/