Ah... I wouldn't be posting specific info like that on here!Regardless: You need to find out whether your dongle thing has a Linux driver for it. It's relatively unusual to get Linux driver issues nowadays, most of them are built in already and it's all good to go.Go to the manufacturer's home page and find your model, see if there's a Linux driver. It would be surprising if a piece of hardware as popular as that didn't have one.I had some problems with a peripheral once, it turned out that after a couple of reboots it spontaneously started working.P.S. I am impressed by your ethernet eating dog. Twisted pair is rather hard to chew through, you should nickname it wiresnips. If you have two RJ45 connectors (very cheap online) and a wiresnip (not your dog), you can follow a tutorial online and turn the broken cable into one or two crossover cables. This will enable you to transfer info between computers just using a single cable, no expensive gear. You could make a mini-LAN :)