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The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

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Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#211

Post by hippich »

ploxiln wrote: post #195
zanny wrote: post #175

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 g…

Much appreciated tip, thanks. I've known some atheros chips had really good drivers, but this is more specific than my vague impressions. I suppose a major cause of the situation is that hardly anyone buys a laptop with the wifi chip as the first concern. Most laptops for sale don't clearly show the wifi chip, unless you go into the online configurator where you might be able to pay for an upgrade (yes I'm one of the…

thanks to previous comment i just ordered one card on ebay for under $10 to test my theory - any laptop with pcie wifi card can be "upgraded" to atheros card. and i might even get few bucks back, since usually laptop-specific cards cost more on ebay :))

in theory if pcie cards are completely interchangeable, i should be able just swap them in and out. will see if it work out.

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#213

Post by dingaling »

JetSpiegel wrote: post #207
tlarimer wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can be when they are in abundance.

The plural of anecdote is not data, though.

> The plural of anecdote is not data, though.

Of course it is.

What do you think data comprises? It's just an aggregation of anecdotes.

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#214

Post by cerberusss »

briandh wrote: post #154
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 lapt…

> The moral of the story is that there are a huge number > of different hardware and software configurations and > environments to use them in

True, and it partly makes all these complaints valid for other OSes as well. I had major trouble with my MacBook connecting to my home wifi, until I bought a new router. No trouble anymore.

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#215

Post by cerberusss »

plg wrote: post #104

Not much better on OS X ... my brand new laptop with the most current OS X is totally unreliable about connecting to wi-fi on wake from sleep. Even on reboot half the time it fails. Maybe different cause from that highlighted by the OP's article ... but in the end not much better situation.

Try a different router. This helped me a great deal.

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#216

Post by icambron »

fragmede wrote: post #37
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 )

I have a late 2012 13". It usually takes ~8 seconds to connect to an AP. Seems to depend on the AP and anecdotally it's very sensitive to the wireless channel. Maybe I just have a bad card or something.

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#217

Post by pjmlp »

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.

It is this little things that made me move away from GNU/Linux as main laptop OS.

The OS is great when it works, but then those little things are always around the corner, turning weekend actions into weeks.

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#218

Post by switch007 »

gnu8 wrote: post #145
switch007 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ...

Looks interesting, but which devices and drivers does it apply to? I have no expectation that this would work over every common wifi interface in current laptops (to say nothing of the typical home gateway with their embedded linux distribution and custom proprietary drivers).

Any driver which supports debugfs. Proprietary drivers of course will always be problematic.

Manufacturers could always agree on some kind of debugging protocol... I'm sure we'd up with only one "standard" ;-)

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#219

Post by antocv »

pjmlp wrote: post #217
dheera wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+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.

It is this little things that made me move away from GNU/Linux as main laptop OS. The OS is great when it works, but then those little things are always around the corner, turning weekend actions into weeks.

Indeed.

But it is still my main OS everywhere, I refuse to bow to proprietary overlords. Despite these downsides.

Re: The sad state of Linux Wi-Fi

#220

Post by zvrba »

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…

> Copy paste, printing and networking. Biggest usability misses of Linux.

Hah. 5 years ago I switched my desktop from Linux to Windows because copy-paste suddenly stopped working. Suddenly it became impossible to copy an URL link from the terminal into FF's address bar. Then I said to myself I didn't have time for this s*t. I've never looked back after switching.

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