Linksys tends to be screwball but what you really need to track, if
you can, is the chipset.
Atheros is the gold standard, both because the open-source drivers
rock and because they can "re-broadcast" - you can feed the system
Internet from something else and use an Atheros card to drive it as a
WiFi hot-spot. This same ability makes it superb at cracking WEP if
that's what you're into. Unfortunately USB-plug-in Atheros devices
aren't too common.
Broadcom support is OK, Intel is better but neither are any good at
re-broadcasting. Intel has good fully-open-source drivers while
Broadcom requires loading firmware into the card from a
"blob"...Ubuntu makes this a painless process though you will need
another Internet connection first to get the firmware pack.
I usually detest Realtek chipsets (which Linksys uses a lot) and
Ralink can suck too at times...both are found on low-end devices a
lot.
You can usually google a particular device by make and model and
figure out which chipset it's using, either by mentions on
ubuntuforums or if nothing else, go fetch the driver package for
Windows and take apart the .INI file or look at other files in the
installer - it's usually obvious from there. If you're buying
something PCI-based retail, look at the actual picture of the device,
look for the biggest chip, you can often read the chipset maker's logo
right there.
Jim
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