Linux does not detect my USB device

[BigLinux]

Linux does not detect my wireless USB device unless I first plug it in and then boot up into Linux... if I first boot and then I plug in the device it does not detect it... not much of a plug and play :/

[WingedPanther]

It depends on the distro you're talking about. Which are you talking about using?

Example: Ubuntu does plug-n-play pretty well. I suspect Slackware requires you to mount pen drives manually.

[Jordan]

After you plug it in (immediately after), drop to a shell (terminal) and run tail -20 /var/logs/messages and paste the results here.

[BigLinux]

I am using puppy Linux

@Jordan: Will do next time I boot using puppy linux

[jpconleyiv]

Hmm, Interesting. Is this machine dual booted? Is this Linux machine being ran virtually?If this is being ran virtually please post what the main OS is and its version. Is this wireless USB a dongle for range extending, or WiFi?? Please explain in detail.

Here are a couple of things:

1)If Linux is dual booted than it shares the hardware that another OS is using. Thus, the Linux distro (remember open source) may be secondary to the hardware and need that USB dongle to be inserted as if it were a piece of installed hardware.

2)If you running this Linux distro virtually than you need to set the permissions on what is allowed in that specific distro via settings depending on what virtual machine you are using.