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The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

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Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#91

Post by izacus »

danielweber wrote: post #65
Someone1234 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

Vista was the first time I suddenly found myself unable to use my headphones on a Windows machine. Sounds was forced to go out through the speakers. I eventually rebooted to fix it. I feel things are moving backwards.

Your single anectodal evidence of single non-updated driver does not really prove anything about "going backwards" or tell anything about the merit of new audio stack.

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#92

Post by chipotle_coyote »

krakensden wrote: post #39
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.

While this is another 'Well, works for me" kind of response, I've never had a problem printing from a laptop with OS X. Windows, yes. But OS X generally just finds the printer and goes, with no configuration necessary at all.

Aren't most Linux distributions still using CUPS, the system OS X uses under the hood?

(More on topic for the actual post here, the last couple of times I've tried to install Linux on a laptop getting wifi going has been a bit finicky, but usually so has getting things like booting into a GUI. I've attributed that less to Linux than to me trying to stick it on obsolete Apple hardware, though.)

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#93

Post by freehunter »

dendory wrote: post #34

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…

I tried setting proxy configuration so that apt-get would work with my employer's proxy. I put my (plain-text) username and password into a dozen different configuration files before it finally worked. Then I changed my password, and couldn't remember where all I had put my credentials in. I ended up having to reinstall the whole OS because I couldn't figure out how to undo the proxy settings that took me forever to figure out in the first place. Skipping over the fact that I had to put the password in plain text.

So yes, I agree.

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#94

Post by clarry »

antocv wrote: post #77
fragmede wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you haven't used Network Manager in years, I'd suggest taking another look. It (like PulseAudio) was shipped far too early, souring early-adopters on its use. Later kernels have (somewhat) cleaned up the wireless driver interface so these days I don't have problems with day-to-day usage of Network Manager.

PulseAudio still requires you to be a hacker to get sound over network - something it promised to do well, but oh doesnt.

If you aren't blessed with luck, one might say that PulseAudio still requires you to be a hacker to get sound. Over and over again. Every time you think it's fixed for good, it'll prove you wrong.

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#95

Post by farresito »

bitwize wrote: post #89
farresito wrote: post #54

Thanks god you use an Intel card. When I bought a Thinkpad, it came with a Realtek card. I'm still connecting through ethernet; never managed to make it work.

I have a thinkpad wired into a wifi bridge. Since it almost never moves nowadays, it's a pert-near ideal setup and sure beats the naff kernel support for the thing's internal rtl8192se chipset.

Ah, interesting. I barely move my Thinkpad, too, so it's not that big of a deal, but it's very sad all the situation. Someone mentioned here a github user was maintaining a driver for the card he was using, so I decided to check out if someone had a patched version of the Realtek I have on my computer, and it seems that there is: https://github.com/FreedomBen/rtl8188ce-linux-driver

You might want to check out https://github.com/pvaret/rtl8192cu-fixes and https://github.com/dz0ny/rt8192cu

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#96

Post by sandGorgon »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #92
krakensden wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

While this is another 'Well, works for me" kind of response, I've never had a problem printing from a laptop with OS X. Windows, yes. But OS X generally just finds the printer and goes, with no configuration necessary at all. Aren't most Linux distributions still using CUPS, the system OS X uses under the hood? (More on topic for the actual post here, the last couple of times I've tried to install Linux on a laptop g…

As I mentioned, it has less to do with the underlying technology than the effort it takes to tie them together.

Setting up HP WiFi printers is not seamless. In know how to do it (using hp-plugin), but things could have been packaged to work seamlessly.

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#98

Post by freehunter »

krakensden wrote: post #39
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.

My Lexmark X4850 begs to differ. No drivers, doesn't work, period. Lexmark doesn't care, and apparently no Linux driver developers have this printer, so no one has made support for it yet.

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#99

Post by yellowapple »

> between the Intel cards I've always been using

That's probably a big part of the issue; my experience with Intel wireless on Linux hasn't been as great as with, say, Atheros chipsets.

Plus, NetworkManager. Good God is that terrible. To put it in perspective: on one of my laptops (a PowerBook G4 running OpenBSD), I basically run the following by hand to connect to a wireless network:

    sudo ifconfig bwi0 nwid $MY_SSID
    sudo ifconfig wpa
    sudo ifconfig wpakey $MY_WPA_KEY
    sudo dhclient bwi0
Even that - on a crappy Broadcom wireless NIC, no less - is faster and more reliable than NetworkManager connecting with a good Atheros card.

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#100

Post by keithpeter »

john61 wrote: post #60
tdicola wrote: post #33

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.

I use Linux on ThinkPads since 1999 or so. I can not remember issues I could not solve. Just last week I installed Debian Wheezy on a X61 and everything worked out of the box. Works like a charm. This is a helpful resource: http://www.thinkwiki.org

Yup, Thinkpad X60 with Intel wifi cards seems to work OK provided you add the non-free firmware iwlwifi package. Some of the X61 and X61s series had an Atheros wifi card and would work from a default Debian install.

I've also had good luck with a Dell Latitiude E5420 (i5). This and similar models have a Broadcom wifi card which is a known problem so I simply purchased an Atheros half size wifi card and popped it in. Unlike Thinkpads, the Dell bios will take hardware changes in its stride.

Of course, we should not have to do these things. Perhaps as laptop sales decrease, a crowdfunded fully free laptop will become economically viable.

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