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The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

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Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#161

Post by serf »

alrs wrote: post #16
cad71 wrote: post #4

Yep and that is the beauty, but also the pitfall of open source. People can patch to make things work for them, but also as long no one take up the task (or form a group) to fundamentally redo a driver or rewrite the architecture nothing happens. So you should take up the task to change things (find people to help you), that's the strength of open source (community driven)

rtfm. Linux provides the architecture, the vendors ignore it and do it themselves. The Intel drivers require blobs. Broadcom used to require blobs that you had to cut out of Windows drivers yourself, though I have no idea what that's like now. The vendors use the excuse that this stuff requires FCC certification, and if they expose the low-level stuff some hax0rs will turn the wi-fi portion of the spectrum into CB ra…

which thinkpad are you using which locks to intel cards?

I know that's a pretty common occurrence of thinkpads, but I hadn't heard one that was strictly manufacture specific. Most thinkpads i've encountered are "Use Intel 5400AGN OR Broadcom'blahblahblah',not 'Use Intel Only', and all of those thinkpads i've experienced that with have had BIOS reflash available to work around that particular problem.

p.s. this message isn't intended for snark, it's intended to allow me to skip whichever thinkpad it is that's locked down. My bets are on one of the thin cant-take-the-battery-out ultrabook 'ThinkPads', but we'll see!

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#162

Post by tomn »

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…

NetworkManager doesn't relay any error information to the interface at all, but it's log files are quite detailed.

At least on systemd based distributions (tested on arch), running

  journalctl -fu NetworkManager
will show you the live logs of NetworkManager interleaved with the logs of it's subprocesses; this has lots of juicy information that i've found quite usefull for debugging.

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#163

Post by maxmem »

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…

What routers are you using?

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#164

Post by gonzo »

> "Instead we get access points trying to layer hacks upon hacks to try to force clients into making the right decisions."

point-in-fact, this is how 802.11 works.

> And separate ESSIDs for 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz.

I'm not sure if the author thinks this is a good idea, or a bad one.

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#165

Post by mrinterweb »

shock wrote: post #158
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

Thank you. I will check that out.

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#166

Post by tlarimer »

schmichael wrote: post #119
bitwize wrote: post #83

If you're using NetworkMangler, God help you. Shit's never worked right for me... even connecting to my home wifi it gets way fewer bars than it should, and keeps making and breaking the association. Using just wpa_supplicant and dhclient, I've had far fewer problems, particularly with Intel wireless chipsets. Linux would benefit from a bit of expectations management. Some of us neither want nor need a less expensive…

I've been using NetworkManager for years with few complaints. I love its VPN support and have used it consistently at a couple jobs. The moral: Anecdotes aren't very useful.

They can be when they are in abundance.

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#167

Post by shinymbp »

this thread (not the article itself) is one fine example of the decline "hacker"-news is going through

if you look at "linux" as a community of users and developers there is lots of get stuff for free attitude and not enough people capable of and willing to work on the tasks waiting (open source drivers for mobile GPUs anyone?)

but hey, aren't we all busy on making lots of $$$ with our übercool startups these days? call it the sad state of hacker ethics or continue to improve the free software world day by day .. choice is yours

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#168

Post by klodolph »

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…

It's opaque on Linux, but that's not the big problem. It's opaque on OS X and Windows as well, but nobody cares because it works.

I wonder if we'll eventually get the kind of stability that we currently have with ethernet drivers... once the speeds are high enough that we stop upgrading, once the chips go into long-term production instead of changing every few years, once things settle down...

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#169

Post by aye »

tomn wrote: post #162
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…

NetworkManager doesn't relay any error information to the interface at all, but it's log files are quite detailed. At least on systemd based distributions (tested on arch), running journalctl -fu NetworkManager will show you the live logs of NetworkManager interleaved with the logs of it's subprocesses; this has lots of juicy information that i've found quite usefull for debugging.

> journalctl -fu NetworkManager

Perfectly sums up my feelings about NetworkManager.

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#170

Post by pyre »

a-nikolaev wrote: post #152
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 h…

Years ago, I had issues with several hotel wifis on the east coast. I found that completely disabling NetworkManager and manually connecting was the only work-around. But NetworkManager had to be disabled from startup. If it was started at any point, even if the service was stopped (and a manual connection was attempted) I couldn't connect to the network.

It's hit-or-miss.

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