Wireless on linux with the AirLink 101

I don't want to market something in particular like this, but my experience with wireless devices and linux has not been great, so I figured that since I've come across something that is both inexpensive, fast and it works, I should share in my discovery.

This is my review of the AirLink 101 wireless n 150 mini usb adapter. Yup an adapter...

Why would I use an adapter? Doesn't everything have wireless now? Well, plainly, no. For one, desktops don't always have them, laptops have some unsupported ones, and frankly, there are more things that don't have wireless built in that would be great if they did.

Here comes my requirements:
1) it has to work with my Linux setup. I use Fedora 14 15 as my primary OS.
2) I don't use Windows much (not even for work), but I suppose it should work with that.
3) I have macs in my life -- and since the wireless is crapping out on a 5 year old mac, a wee usb adapter would be a great alternative.
4) and other devices like the WDTV Live need to work with it

So, I did my looking and found this AirLink 101 - and luck has it, it's available on Amazon. And for $12 USD - cheap by any standards. And since I felt lucky, I splurged. How could I go wrong?

Famous last words, you're thinking. So, lets try it out!

OK I plugged it in. Mmm ya.
* not recognized as a wireless device - crap.
OK, lets see if it is recognized on the usb list

lsusb

* there it is

Bus 001 Device 006: ID 0bda:8171 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL8188SU 802.11n WLAN Adapter

* is it in my module list? Nope. Hmmm. * do I have a module that matches? Nope. Hmmm. This is where google makes life great! - Ah, I need something called kernel staging related to the kmod-staging. OK

yum install  kmod-staging

* do I have a module that mathces now? yup!

insmod r8192u_usb.ko

what do you know, it works! And it wasn't hard. And it wasn't hard... did I mention that? If you've farted around with wireless in Linux before with limited success, you will appreciate this bit. Ok - now lets see if it works with the WDTV? I plug it in - no light? hmm. Ok I'll go into the settings... settings -> network -> set up wireless -> password ... wait a little bit for it to connect... It works! Sweet! Now how does it do for watching You Tube? I know, it's not a big test or anything, but really, my standards start low. Well, streaming YouTube is great. What about HD? update: HD works great too! - I don't have much of that, but it looks good and streams fine. So a few more experiments to come. hope this helps someone, if not, just me.