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The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

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Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#31

Post by switch007 »

captainmuon wrote: post #2

One problem is that WiFi is completely opaque, especially but not only on Linux. You get no low-level and no debugging information. It just connects and you get some bars, or it doesn't. I never know where to start when debugging a bad connection, and I wouldn't know where to start if I wanted to improve Linux WiFi. For example, sometimes I can see a network, but can't connect. Why? I'd like to see something like "se…

I've never dug in to it before, but some googling just suggested

  /sys/kernel/debug/ieee80211/phy*/
e.g.

  # cat /sys/kernel/debug/ieee80211/phy*/netdev:*/stations/*/rc_stats

  rate      throughput  ewma prob  this prob  this succ/attempt   success    attempts
       1         0.6       68.0      100.0             0(  0)         9          12
  ...

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#32

Post by Someone1234 »

scrollaway wrote: post #28
sandGorgon wrote: post #27

Copy paste, printing and networking. Biggest usability misses of Linux. I don't consider these technical issues...but usability issues. Things like insisting on keeping the install ISO at 750 mb, leaves seamless driver support out of the todo list because...hey, there are no drivers anyway. I'm really surprised there is not a paid version of Linux with these features baked in. I would GLADLY pay for all these (as wel…

Sound isn't too great either. The BlueZ developers for example decided to drop HSF/HSP support in BlueZ 5.x [1], which means there is no way to get a bluetooth headset (with a microphone) working on Linux anymore; there's just no way. Although it's not like sound is great on Windows either. [1] http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/Notes/5....

> Although it's not like sound is great on Windows either.

Pre-Vista I might have agreed with you but now? I think Windows has quite good audio stack.

See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_features_new_to_Wind...

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#33

Post by tdicola »

I would extend it out to laptops and Linux in general. I've tried a few times over the last 10 years or so to use Linux on normal consumer laptops (Dells, Thinkpads, etc.) and it's always a really bad experience. Wifi issues, battery life, etc. have major problems. In the end I just gave up trying and use a MacBook with virtualization for running Linux.

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#34

Post by dendory »

I think a big portion of the problems Linux has these days is how unbelievably bloated and overconvulated distributions have become. Every single function has three, four or more ways to do the same thing, often with different results. When trying to get something working I never know if I should run the /etc/init.d script, restart the service manually, edit a config file, use the command line config until or use the GUI settings option. Sometimes you edit a config file and get the thing to work, only to find out some other utility will overwrite it next reboot. Other times you get strange errors or just nothing at all, because it's a deprecated method and you should have used the brand new tool-du-jour instead. It's a mess.

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#35

Post by mackal »

mikepurvis wrote: post #7

It only gets worse on headless/embedded/arm machines. The RPi list of Wi-Fi adapters gives something of a picture: http://elinux.org/RPi_USB_Wi-Fi_Adapters Note the number of ones which require some additional configuration steps, downloads, patches, or other monkeying around. And don't even get me started on connman and wicd.

wicd is pretty dead. It uses deprecated kernel features that will be removed at some point and with no maintainer for wicd, it will just stop working.

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#36

Post by ertdfgcb »

icambron wrote: post #15

One of a handful reasons I don't have Linux on my laptop anymore, even though I like so many things about Linux so much more. I'm not sure about this point, though: > Connection time. I dislike OS X pretty deeply and think that many of its technical merits are way overblown, but it's got one thing going for it; it connects to an AP fast. I remember Linux being slow (and unreliable) at this, but OSX is pretty slow too…

I've noticed that on my OSX macbook the connection time is slow, but it seems to connect before you log in if it's asleep. I think Apple uses tricks like this to make it seem much faster.

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#37

Post by fragmede »

icambron wrote: post #15

One of a handful reasons I don't have Linux on my laptop anymore, even though I like so many things about Linux so much more. I'm not sure about this point, though: > Connection time. I dislike OS X pretty deeply and think that many of its technical merits are way overblown, but it's got one thing going for it; it connects to an AP fast. I remember Linux being slow (and unreliable) at this, but OSX is pretty slow too…

Which MBP do you have?

It's fast on Apple products because they 'cheat', and re-use the last-given DHCP address.

http://cafbit.com/entry/rapid_dhcp_or_how_do (and the follow up, http://cafbit.com/entry/rapid_dhcp_redux)

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#38

Post by atomicfiredoll »

scrollaway wrote: post #28
sandGorgon wrote: post #27

Copy paste, printing and networking. Biggest usability misses of Linux. I don't consider these technical issues...but usability issues. Things like insisting on keeping the install ISO at 750 mb, leaves seamless driver support out of the todo list because...hey, there are no drivers anyway. I'm really surprised there is not a paid version of Linux with these features baked in. I would GLADLY pay for all these (as wel…

Sound isn't too great either. The BlueZ developers for example decided to drop HSF/HSP support in BlueZ 5.x [1], which means there is no way to get a bluetooth headset (with a microphone) working on Linux anymore; there's just no way. Although it's not like sound is great on Windows either. [1] http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/Notes/5....

I'm just here (on my laptop with speakers that have mysteriously stopped working) to second any comments relating to the sorry state of Linux audio.

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#39

Post by krakensden »

sandGorgon wrote: post #27

Copy paste, printing and networking. Biggest usability misses of Linux. I don't consider these technical issues...but usability issues. Things like insisting on keeping the install ISO at 750 mb, leaves seamless driver support out of the todo list because...hey, there are no drivers anyway. I'm really surprised there is not a paid version of Linux with these features baked in. I would GLADLY pay for all these (as wel…

I haven't had trouble with printing in years- in fact, I can basically print on everything with no configuration, and people with OS X and Windows laptops seem to have lots of problems.

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#40

Post by krakensden »

scrollaway wrote: post #28
sandGorgon wrote: post #27

Copy paste, printing and networking. Biggest usability misses of Linux. I don't consider these technical issues...but usability issues. Things like insisting on keeping the install ISO at 750 mb, leaves seamless driver support out of the todo list because...hey, there are no drivers anyway. I'm really surprised there is not a paid version of Linux with these features baked in. I would GLADLY pay for all these (as wel…

Sound isn't too great either. The BlueZ developers for example decided to drop HSF/HSP support in BlueZ 5.x [1], which means there is no way to get a bluetooth headset (with a microphone) working on Linux anymore; there's just no way. Although it's not like sound is great on Windows either. [1] http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/Notes/5....

Apparently the BlueZ team only works on Android now, even though it's no longer shipped with AOSP (or even any phones?)
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