I needed to buy a Wireless card for my desktop computer, and unfortunately… much to my dismay… despite there being *very* large lists out there on cards that more or less work with my version of linux (Ubuntu Natty Narwhal 11.04), there really wasn’t a list of *detailed reviews* as to indicate how well any given card works with linux.

Seems like an opportunity waiting to happen for someone that wants to put together a review site and curate what’s already kind of somewhat out there.

I went ahead and grabbed the asus CPE-N13. It was cheap, a brand name I recognized, and Wireless N (multiple antennas!).

Much to my dismay, the card did *not* work right out of the box. First, I had to blacklist some default but immature drivers that comes with ubuntu 11.04:

# Add these to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

blacklist rt2800pci
blacklist rt2800usb
blacklist rt2x00lib
blacklist rt2x00pci
blacklist rt2x00usb

Pulled out the patch cable, rebooted for good measure… and voila we have wireless.