Belkin 802.11g Wireless USB 2.0 Network Adapter

I have used and set up three of these incredibly cheap 54g adaptors on Windows XP, Windows 98 and Ubuntu Linux. They seem to get a better signal than the PCI cards they replaced.

Windows

The main thing I recommend on XP is to avoid using Belkin's Wireless utility and let the Windows Add Hardware Wizard install the drivers directly from the CD, usually D:\drivers. If you already installed it according to the manual and it's misbehaving (dropped connections or "Windows could not connect") try uninstalling the Belkin utility from the control panel and letting Windows manage the device itself.

Since this unit has no USB serial number, if you plug it into a different USB port Windows will think it has a new device and install it again. Recent versions of Zonealarm firewall have caused problems as well, so try shutting firewalls down if you are still having problems.

UPDATE: Search Belkin support for F5D7050 to get a newer driver. This solves all sorts of problems. However, you have to magically know what version of the interface you're using, which is somewhat revealed by the FCC number. I have one which is F5D7050, which is version 1, and another F5D7050A which works with F5D7050_v2 drivers (If I remember correctly)

Linux

You need to install ndiswrapper. I installed mine with apt-get. Use it with the files rt2500usb.inf and rt2500usb.sys from the drivers directory on the CD. I have to boot with it unplugged and plug it in later so that hotplug will find it. Sometimes the command modprobe ndiswrapper is required before it will show up in ifconfig. Refer to the ndiswrapper installation wiki for details.

UPDATE: No need for any of that with a fresh install of Ubuntu Dapper Drake (6.06) - the included wifi drivers just work! Again, the first time I had to keep it unplugged during boot, and then plug it in, wait, and enable it in the Networking applet. I was at first impatient and tried to enable it before it was fully up and got a complete freeze which only a hard reset would solve. But now it seems to be working fully and normally, even though there's a warning in dmesg about old drivers.