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The Terrible State of WiFi in Linux
Understand, however, that I applaud the ongoing efforts of Ralink, Intel and Atheros. These groups have bent over backwards to make life easier for the casual Linux enthusiast. Unfortunately, less than savory options seem to be weaseling their way into places where the aforementioned companies were there to help us out. |
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Comments (5)
A typically bizarre Matt Hartley article. He starts out by crabbing at a two-year old article, then wanders all over the place without really making a point. But then, it's pointless to expect better from OS Weekly.
I think he's right that the binary blob issue is an excuse, but I don't see what for- I just believe that it is because vendors are such freaks about so many things. Wireless in Linux could be better, but it's certainly not terrible. On the client side we have Atheros, Ralink, Realtek, and Intel. Atheros-based chips make dandy wireless access points; I will never purchase a commercial WAP as long as I can roll my own Linux-based devices.
Ubiquiti is making news with its Atheros-based WAN wifi radio cards, which work great on Linux with the MadWiFi drivers.
Sooo... I'm not sure why I bother reading Hartley's fact-challenged rants. Maybe someone will read the comments here and learn something useful :)
I think he's right that the binary blob issue is an excuse, but I don't see what for- I just believe that it is because vendors are such freaks about so many things. Wireless in Linux could be better, but it's certainly not terrible. On the client side we have Atheros, Ralink, Realtek, and Intel. Atheros-based chips make dandy wireless access points; I will never purchase a commercial WAP as long as I can roll my own Linux-based devices.
Ubiquiti is making news with its Atheros-based WAN wifi radio cards, which work great on Linux with the MadWiFi drivers.
Sooo... I'm not sure why I bother reading Hartley's fact-challenged rants. Maybe someone will read the comments here and learn something useful :)
> Linux wifi support has improved in leaps and bounds in the last two years.
Yeah, that's what I've seen. A large number of Distros support it out of the box. We occasionally see someone wandering in to ask how to get it working, but that's easily resolved.
Personally, I still avoid wifi, but only because being forced to wear that darned tinfoil hat chafes my head :D
Yeah, that's what I've seen. A large number of Distros support it out of the box. We occasionally see someone wandering in to ask how to get it working, but that's easily resolved.
Personally, I still avoid wifi, but only because being forced to wear that darned tinfoil hat chafes my head :D
Watchout for kernel upgrades on FC5:
I'm using a Hawking USB WiFi that uses the free zd1211 driver from Zydas. The Fedora up2date did a kernel upgrade from 2.6.15 to 2.6.18, which didn't cause any problems at first, until I rebooted.
The zd1211rt module, that comes bundled with the kernel package from Fedora, doesn't work with my Hawking. The module from the Zydas site does - after I built it from source. When I load the module (after re-building for the 2.6.18 kernel) it doesn't detect the USB WiFi. When I reboot back into 2.6.15 everything works just fine.
So even *with* free drivers, WiFi is still a crap shoot with Linux.
Edited: I have a couple of Belkin WiFi PCMCIA cards that I've not had any trouble with on my laptops - including Knoppix and Ubuntu through several kernel upgrades. My instinct tells me that the most trouble with WiFi on Linux may be in the USB arena.
I'm using a Hawking USB WiFi that uses the free zd1211 driver from Zydas. The Fedora up2date did a kernel upgrade from 2.6.15 to 2.6.18, which didn't cause any problems at first, until I rebooted.
The zd1211rt module, that comes bundled with the kernel package from Fedora, doesn't work with my Hawking. The module from the Zydas site does - after I built it from source. When I load the module (after re-building for the 2.6.18 kernel) it doesn't detect the USB WiFi. When I reboot back into 2.6.15 everything works just fine.
So even *with* free drivers, WiFi is still a crap shoot with Linux.
Edited: I have a couple of Belkin WiFi PCMCIA cards that I've not had any trouble with on my laptops - including Knoppix and Ubuntu through several kernel upgrades. My instinct tells me that the most trouble with WiFi on Linux may be in the USB arena.
No problems at all with my ipw2200 on any distro I have tried (Mepis, several *buntu's (Love that Fluxbuntu!!!), Debian, Suse, Fedora...), with the exception of PCLinuxOS 2007 TR2. I have dumped the gui tools in all distros in favor of iwlist, iwconfig & dhclient on the CLI...it's nice to see what's really going on.
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On Linux connections are made faster, are more stable, are easier to manage, and seem to perform faster.
Linux wifi support has improved in leaps and bounds in the last two years.
I would like Free drivers over the binary blobs, think what improvements the community could make. Still all in all, wifi has been a no-brainer on Linux for me for the past 7 or 8 months.
I know that the Ubuntu 6.10 live-cd recognized my wife's broadcomm chip, and I was able to connect to our AC without the NDISWrapper and with only minimal set up. so if I had to install on her laptop, I could.
Check out wifi-radar as a wifi control and discovery tool. Its awsome.