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The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

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Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#151

Post by Brakenshire »

yellowapple wrote: post #105
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.

That's strange, since GNU/Linux and OS X both (last I checked) use CUPS for printing. That said, it really depends on what printer(s) you buy. I've had wonderful experiences with HP printers, and tend to recommend them. Brother, Konica Minolta, and Epson printers work reasonably well with some tinkering and research in my experience. Canon? Godspeed ;)

Is there any sort of certification scheme for CUPS? Given that's the standard for Mac and Linux, I'm surprised companies don't make 'CUPS compliant' printers.

I see a lot of recommendations for Brother printers, but they seem to require quite an involved process to set up.

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#152

Post by a-nikolaev »

ploxiln wrote: post #11

I stopped using NetworkManager years ago, I just use wpa_supplicant and dhcpcd directly (well I use the systemd services for these so they're started automatically). I also always name the 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks differently, and connect explicitly to the one I want. Yes it would be great if NetworkManager did the right things automatically, but the task might be impossible due to hardware and driver quirks. WiFi ch…

I had been using wicd on my old laptop for a few years. Then, when configuring a new computer, wicd failed to work on it. I tried, probably, everything, even the most low level CLI tools, but still connection kept failing, and frustratingly, it was providing almost no information about what was going wrong.. Then, I installed XFCE to had some temporary GUI, and its NM connected to WiFi. Now, I'm using NM, and still have no idea, why other tools did not work for me.

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#153

Post by simpsond »

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…

Wireshark is a good tool for inspecting 802.11 frames, but it's still a pain. If you do go down this path, I highly recommend adding a capture filter for your adapters MAC, so you don't get flooded with management frames. Filter string: wlan addr 00:00:00:00:00:00.

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#154

Post by briandh »

rbanffy wrote: post #109

I have 3 Linux laptops in the house. One with Intel running Ubuntu, another with Broadcom running Fedora and the third with a Prism interface running CentOS 6. All three work flawlessly. We also have 3 Macbooks, a white one, a Pro 13 and a Retina 13. All three work flawlessly with our Wi-fi. My wife had a corporate-issued HP laptop running Windows 7. It connected to our wireless once or twice over a year. I had a net…

This stuff can be tricky.

For years I was using a D-Link USB dongle with a Ralink chip to connect to my home network. At first I had to use a non-mainline driver but eventually mainline caught up. Anyway, either way, it worked pretty well without much fuss.

Then I moved to an apartment building with dozens of repeaters in it for a large university network, and my connection became unbearably slow (even though my laptop running Linux and my Android phone and tablet all worked fine) despite working OK on Windows.

So I ordered another dongle by a different manufacturer with a different chipset, which had many reviews exclaiming how well it worked on Linux. It had the same problems.

Eventually I got a PCIE Intel card and it worked splendidly, with no fiddling whatsoever.

The moral of the story is that there are a huge number of different hardware and software configurations and environments to use them in. And what's more, a configuration that works without issue in one environment can fail spectacularly in another.

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#155

Post by scottlocklin »

ghostwords wrote: post #70

I ended up blacklisting the built-in card on my ThinkPad X220 because it was too flaky to rely on: $ cat /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-local.conf blacklist rtl8192ce I use a USB adapter instead (SMCWUSB-N2), which, besides providing wireless internet, is a fine reminder to just get a MacBook next time.

That worked for me very well ... until the USB gizmo fell out. :(

Ironically, I quit OS-X because my macbook was even worse.

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#156

Post by andor »

krakensden wrote: post #40
scrollaway wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?)

The reason appears to be that Intel wants Android to work well on their hardware, and the new BlueDroid stack doesn't support any Intel-specific features. Instead of fixing the sketchy (details in article) BlueDroid code, they decided to make BlueZ a drop-in replacement for BlueDroid:

http://lwn.net/Articles/597293/

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#157

Post by serf »

fragmede wrote: post #127
clarry wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

On the large majority of laptops I've installed Ubuntu on recently, sound has just worked out of the box, so here's to hoping my lucky streak continues!

It's all about having a common hardware profile.

Add any external sound hardware, use a optical or SPDIF port instead, add some speakers. It'll break sooner-or-later, and in my own experiences it tends to be whenever my personal computer gets away from the 'typical' desktop profile.

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#158

Post by shock »

mrinterweb wrote: post #23

I can sympathize with this article. Every time my kernel is upgraded, I must manually recompile my wireless driver. I'm using a patched version of a Broadcom wireless driver that some kind soul on Github has been maintaining. If I was new to linux, there would be no way that I would have been able to get my wireless interface working in the first place. Linux has made vast improvements over the years in how well it w…

Look into dkms[0] so the driver is compiled automatically on each kernel upgrade.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Kernel_Module_Support

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#159

Post by dheera »

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.

+1 I tried for an hour to get PulseAudio to work with Bluetooth and A2DP and use my phone as a sound source. Decided I wasn't going to waste time on this. Gave up and ended up buying an external A2DP box off Amazon and plugged it into my Line In port.

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#160

Post by aeturnum »

dheera wrote: post #150

"The 5 GHz signal is just as strong" Interesting. My dormitory at MIT has both 2.4GHz and 5GHz signals. The 5GHz is extremely weak but my Android devices love to pick a weak 5GHz signal over the 2.4GHz and subsequently have terrible speeds. On another note, I wish that browsers and applications would keep firing spawning and firing requests at a rate beyond human perception, until one succeeds. The state of browsing…

> I wish that browsers and applications would keep firing spawning and firing requests at a rate beyond human perception, until one succeeds.

I do not think you would enjoy the network conditions that come with that behavior. The point about killing old sockets early when switching wifi makes a lot of sense, however.

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