Despite if it's proprietary or not, just use it (assuming it works); I mean, ..duh, you've already bought the card =P - unless you plan on buying another Network card. [and for no other reason, but supporting an obscure belief (once again, assuming it works)]
Exactly. So you SHOULD be able to get free/open drivers for it. It's pretty sad when the vendors won't even give out information on how to write drivers for their hardware. And that's the main problem that you can't find open drivers for a certain hardware. You see, it's not really important that the hardware vendor writes a driver for you, unless you've bought software support from them, but they ought to release information so that someone else, or yourself can write a driver (and then, hopefully make it free/open so the whole community can benefit).
Having bought the card is not a
reason to use proprietary drivers. If you can, you should get hardware that supports FLOSS in one way or another. If there are free/open drivers as an alternative to proprietary drivers, you
should use them instead even though they are technically inferior (instead they are ethically superior which is more important). Of course, everyone can choose what they think is right individually, but using proprietary software will always be unethical to the community as a whole.
I recommend the WiFi USB-thingies that use the ZyDAS chip. They have an free/open driver called zd1211 and it's compiled into the newer kernels (which means "things just work"). Zonet ZEW2501 is an example using this chip (I have one myself).
For laptops, you often have Intel Centrino hardware which means you have an Intel Wireless PRO or something. Some of the drivers for these (at least the newer ones, like 3945; I have one of these) use partly proprietary drivers (the firmware). Intel claims this is because they want to make sure users use the wireless legally (i.e. what frequency band you use etc.), but that's pretty weird if you ask me since there are tons of other wireless cards which does allow you to do that (because the responsibility would be on the user). Using the non-free things here is a gray area though because the driver itself is free.
Like I said before you should tell us what wireless chip/card you use. I can help more then.
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Topic: Problem with Ubuntu - My laptop's wireless card won't work with it. (Read 1100 times)