Not all wireless cards that are supported by Linux will work with XSupplicant.
There are several reasons for this, but most are related to issues with drivers.

DRIVER MAINTAINERS :  Please see the section at the end of this document for 
information on what needs to be implemented in order to allow your driver to 
work with 802.1x, and dynamic keying!

We (the Open1x developers) have tested all of the cards Linux supports, that
we have been able to get our hands on.  Below are the cards that we have 
tested, and the results we found.

*****  Linux Based  ******

  Card Name   |   Chipset   |  Auth (Y/N) |  dWEP (Y/N)  |  Notes
--------------+-------------+-------------+--------------+--------------------
Orinoco       |  Agere      |   Yes       |   Yes        | Requires a patch to
WaveLAN       |  Hermes     |             |              | allow dynamic
802.11b cards |             |             |              | rekeying to work.
              |             |             |              | (Patch included in
              |             |             |              | XSupplicant.)
              |             |             |              | Tested with version
              |             |             |              | 0.13e
--------------+-------------+-------------+--------------+--------------------
SMC SMC2635W  |  ADMTek     |   Yes       |   Kind of    | Authenticates,
              |             |             |              | but cannot pass
              |             |             |              | traffic.
              |             |             |              | Tested with version
              |             |             |              | 1.05.
--------------+-------------+-------------+--------------+--------------------
LinkSys WPC11 |  Prism      |   Yes       |   Yes        | Tested with wlan-ng
Version 3     |             |             |              | driver version 
              |             |             |              | 0.2.1preX****
--------------+-------------+-------------+--------------+--------------------
SMC SMC2632W  |  Atmel      |   Yes       |   Yes***     | Tested with Atmel
Version 3     |             |             |              | driver 2.1.2.2
--------------+-------------+-------------+--------------+--------------------
Atheros-based |  Atheros    |   Yes       |   Yes        | Requires a patch for
MADWifi Cards |             |             |              | WEP to function.
              |             |             |              | (Patch included in 
              |             |             |              | XSupplicant.)
              |             |             |              | Tested with MADWifi 
              |             |             |              | CVS March 23 200
--------------+-------------+-------------+--------------+--------------------
Cisco 340/350 |  Cisco?     |   No        |    No        | The Cisco driver
              |             |             |              | Hijacks 0x888e which
              |             |             |              | prevents xsupplicant
              |             |             |              | from obtaining the
              |             |             |              | frames.  We are 
              |             |             |              | evalutating this 
              |             |             |              | problem.
--------------+-------------+-------------+--------------+--------------------
Intel Pro 2100| Intel 2100  |   Yes       |    Yes       | Tested with:
Centrino      |             |             |              | hostap-driver-0.2.1
              |             |             |              | 
              |             |             |              | ipw2100-0.44 
              |             |             |              | (patched)
              |             |             |              | 
--------------+-------------+-------------+--------------+--------------------
DriverLoader  | Various*    | Maybe*      | Maybe*       | See the DriverLoader
              |             |             |              | section for more 
              |             |             |              | information.
--------------+-------------+-------------+--------------+--------------------
ndiswrapper   | Various*    | Yes*        | Yes*         | See the ndiswrapper
              |             |             |              | section for more 
              |             |             |              | information.
--------------+-------------+-------------+--------------+--------------------

* See the appropriate section below for more information on this driver 
wrapper.

** This card seems to reset when new WEP keys are applied.  This card may be
   impaired, or not work at all.

*** Default driver resets when new WEP keys are applied.  There is a patch
    included with XSupplicant (in the drivers directory) that fixes this
    problem.

**** Some people have reported that the current releases of the wlan-ng driver
     do not work.  If you have problems, please try the hostap wlan driver
     instead.



-- Getting a driver to work with 802.1x, dynamic WEP, and Linux --
------------------------------------------------------------------

In most cases, getting a wireless card driver to work correctly with 802.1x,
and Linux is fairly simple.  Current driver implementations will issue a card
reset when the WEP keys are set.  When the card is reset, it will start a new
802.11 authentication/association.  This in turn causes a new 802.1x 
authentication to happen.  Once the 802.1x authentication is complete, and a 
WEP key is set, the card is again reset. 

As you can see, this behavior will cause the card to reset itself constantly,
and keep the card from passing traffic correctly.  The solution to this problem
is as simple as *NOT* having the card reset when a WEP key is set! It should 
be noted that driver resets which do not cause re-association should not 
exhibit this problem, since "reset" might mean different things under the 
hood to different drivers.

One other issue that seems to be common among wireless card drivers is the
assumption that the last WEP key set should be the WEP key used to transmit.
Prior to 802.1x, this made some amount of sense, and would work with no
problems.  However, because 802.1x enables the use of more than one key (one 
for transmit, one for recieve, one for broadcast, etc.) the assumption that
the last key set is the transmit key generally doesn't work.  Instead, when
the IOCTL to set the key is made, the only time that the index for the 
transmit key should change, is when the key length is zero.


-- Driver wrappers for Windows driver compatibility --

There are currently two projects that we are aware of that attempt to provide 
the ability to load and use Windows wireless card drivers under Linux - 
DriverLoader, a commercial product, and ndiswrapper, an Open Source product.

We have not yet extensively tested either of these tools with xsupplicant.  
As such, your mileage may vary.  Please let us know about your experiences 
with either DriverLoader or ndiswrapper.


-- DriverLoader - http://www.linuxant.com/driverloader/ --

We are in the process of trying to contact the Linuxant crew regarding their 
claim that "IEEE 802.1X authentication is also supported with xsupplicant." 
It should be mentioned that we do not and have not in any way endorsed the 
Linuxant group's DriverLoader project.  That said, we would very much like 
to see this product work with xsupplicant.

We are beginning to evaluate this product for xsupplicant compatibility, 
although this is  difficult due to the commercial nature of DriverLoader.

Please report any success or failure you have experience with DriverLoader.

-- ndiswrapper - http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/ --

We are beginning to evaluate this product for xsupplicant compatibility.

We do not in any way endorse ndiswrapper, but we would very much like for 
xsupplicant to be compatible with the project.

The following cards have been verified for compatibility with ndiswrapper:

ndiswrapper CVS from June 8, 2004:

Intel Pro Wireless 2100 (HP nx7000 internal MiniPCI) 

Please report any success or failure you have experience with ndiswrapper.

