The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi • Hacker News Board

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#171

Post by pyre » Wed, Jul 23, 2014, 11:20 PM UTC

dheera wrote: post #159

antocv wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Years ago it didn't take me that long to get PulseAudio setup to play from my HTPC through my laptop (so that I could use the headphone jack on the laptop). That said, it wasn't plug-and-play. I didn't use it too often because there were too many moving parts every time I wanted to get it setup (i.e. setup the laptop to receive audio, then get the HTPC to connect to the laptop and send audio... then disable it all to get things back to normal afterwards).

What would have been preferable would be for the HTPC to advertise itself as a audio source, and the laptop to be able to list sources, and let the use select one.

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#172

Post by undersuit » Wed, Jul 23, 2014, 11:27 PM UTC

bri3d wrote: post #56

pwnna wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is copy-paste broken? I never had issues. I don't have issues anymore with printing and networking. I understand that this stuff is per vendor so I usually do my research before buying (I have thinkpads, and my printers are all pretty friendly). I do see many windows computer fall over when printers connect to new wireless networks, though. As for mp3, flash, isn't is as simple as enabling a non-free repository a…

In X, you have N selections referenced by atom. Two atoms (PRIMARY and CLIPBOARD) are sometimes used interchangeably by various software, leading to all sorts of shenanigans where for example selecting then middle clicking pastes something that was "Ctrl+Ced" elsewhere or vice versa. Additionally, X selections aren't buffers - they're handles used asynchronously. So, when you paste, if the source application is dead…

This has some nice little side effects, like I can use the highlight -> middle-click action to get around JS in the browser that is triggered on copying text.

Not that I'm a fan of the situation, Keepass2/Mono break my routine everyday.

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#173

Post by zanny » Wed, Jul 23, 2014, 11:31 PM UTC

slacka wrote: post #68

I discovered this for myself after converting my parents 5 year old PC from XP to Linux Mint. As you can see from the bug tracker: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/852190 the kernel drivers are much buggier than the GPL'd Realtek drivers. But the official Realtek drivers don't work with newer kernel versions. Fortunately there is: https://github.com/pvaret/rtl8192cu-fixes Does anyone know why does…

If those are really under GPL, nothing should stop you from converting them into a kmod using the kernel 802.11 architecture and pushing them upstream. I'd imagine that since it hasn't happened yet there is something else at work impeding it.

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#174

Post by ytjohn » Wed, Jul 23, 2014, 11:32 PM UTC

gonzo wrote: post #164

> "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.

I understood it that he just wants the one SSID and let his devices connect to the appropriate one. But his Linux system will always try the 2.4ghz first, so he ends up creating something like "mywifi24" and "mywifi5".

Personally, I would prefer doing the two separate names so I can know what I'm connecting to. Being a radio guy, I see it as two separate bands, two separate physical radios. I don't see a point in trying to give them the same name.

Of course, for my home environment, I'm pretty much using just 2.4, and I give all my access points the same SSID so I can "roam" between them. I suppose someone could want to be able to roam between 2.4 and 5ghz (I tend to use 5ghz for backhaul).

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#175

Post by zanny » Wed, Jul 23, 2014, 11:35 PM UTC

Right here: https://wikidevi.com/wiki/Atheros_AR5B22

This thing works. I just buy them in bulk. I can get one for $13 off ebay. Any device I run Linux on, I replace whatever half size mpcie card it has with one. I don't fuck with the realtek or broadcom chips I get, because ath9k is all-open, no proprietary firmware, works out of the box. Drivers are in any kernel since the 3 series started, the bluetooth is just a generic HCI bluetooth adapter over PCI, shows up as a usb device and works with bluez no problem.

My best speeds on 5ghz with one of these has been around 20MB/s. Across my house I usually get around 8 - 10 MB/s. I think these chips are supposed to get much higher average throughput, but it works well enough I don't care. Works under Debian, Suse, Fedora, Arch, Mint, Mageia, even Slackware.

Ath10k makes me mad, since they are now shipping firmware blobs. Again. And they were doing so well.

I trust these chips so much when I'm doing IT supports and trying to advocate Linux to customers, I have been able to join every wifi network I've thrown the thing at, from ancient wireless-a routers to wireless AC ASUS routers with 2GB throughput.

Point is, different vendors have different quality. The ath drivers have been great for me, but I've only ever bought this specific chip because of the value proposition.

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#176

Post by nextos » Wed, Jul 23, 2014, 11:54 PM UTC

It can be somehow remedied a bit by adopting two strategies:

- Cherry-pick hardware, in this case cards

- Use very recent software stacks

I just plugged in a Huawei 4G LTE dongle. I spent some time making sure this particular card worked, and discarded many others. I'm running the most recent kernel, systemd, udev, etc. It was a plug & play experience. If I had proceeded otherwise, it'd have been a nightmare.

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#177

Post by nextos » Thu, Jul 24, 2014, 12:02 AM UTC

javert wrote: post #139

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…

Contrary to what other commenters are saying, I've been using NetworkManager on my ArchLinux Thinkpads for years and it works great. (And I don't even have a desktop environment, I have DWM, so I am usually a "do it yourself" person.) Whereas I could never get all the mess working to get things working well without NetworkManager. My experience is, spend hours messing with configuration shit or just let NetworkManage…

I'm also a DIY person. Using networkd already along with systemd and wpa_supplicant. It's very simple and reliable.

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#178

Post by nextos » Thu, Jul 24, 2014, 12:05 AM UTC

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…

Some broadcoms are decent, with blobs in the kernel. But it's pathetic they never implement power saving. Same tends to apply to Intel, sadly.

The result is that my system uses 1.5W more than if I ran OS X. Otherwise, I have very good power consumption, so it doesn't have an impact on overall battery range. But very annoying.

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#179

Post by awongh » Thu, Jul 24, 2014, 12:09 AM UTC

This. Wifi is the #1 reason by far that I ditched my $800 thinkpad to switch to a $3500 MPB. (to still be in a unix environment)

On my thinkpad, with one of the known, supported wifi chipsets, wifi would work about 8-9/10 times.

But because I'm doing web dev stuff, those 1 or 2 times would basically brick the laptop for doing any kind of productive work. And that's not worth any kind of savings or effort....

afaik it's a driver problem first, before a linux wifi problem, but really I have no idea why it was working or not working.

But if anyone is out there listening, this is how much the problem is worth to me- roughly $2500...

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#180

Post by moonchrome » Thu, Jul 24, 2014, 12:23 AM UTC

awongh wrote: post #179

This. Wifi is the #1 reason by far that I ditched my $800 thinkpad to switch to a $3500 MPB. (to still be in a unix environment) On my thinkpad, with one of the known, supported wifi chipsets, wifi would work about 8-9/10 times. But because I'm doing web dev stuff, those 1 or 2 times would basically brick the laptop for doing any kind of productive work. And that's not worth any kind of savings or effort.... afaik it…

Wouldn't a simple USB WLAN solve your problems in the 2/10 case ? These things cost a couple of $ and are smaller than a USB stick.