Ubuntu Linux: Built-in apps get an "A", wireless support an "F" (CNET) [LWN.net]

Ubuntu Linux: Built-in apps get an "A", wireless support an "F" (CNET)

Posted Jan 5, 2008 5:59 UTC (Sat) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582)
Parent article: Ubuntu Linux: Built-in apps get an "A", wireless support an "F" (CNET)

The writer could set up his card easily enough with ndiswrapper, but then couldn't connect.
His problem is network-manager which has never worked for me, has numerous bug reports filed,
and I have NO idea why Ubuntu is thrusting it down people's throats.  I configure it manually
(with iwconfig/wpa-supplicant as the case may be, and dhclient) and it works very nicely.  But
you can't expect regular users to do that.  wlassistant is much nicer and actually works.

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Ubuntu Linux: Built-in apps get an "A", wireless support an "F" (CNET)

Posted Jan 5, 2008 8:07 UTC (Sat) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648) [Link]

Forgive me for playing Devil's advocate, but do you suppose the problem with those unable to get Wi-fi working using Ubuntu and Network-manager lies with missing/uninstalled firmware? I'm speaking in the general context of the "numerous bug reports" and also from my personal experience two years ago with the dreaded Linksys/Broadcom PCMCIA card and NDISWrapper.

There often exist many different Windows/Mac drivers for the same card (as I found out - there were five different Win32 drivers on the Linksys WPC54G CD-ROM!). After I figured out which specific driver I needed and had NDISWrapper installed, I was frustrated to learn I had to get another software tool (fwcutter) to extract firmware blobs from the CD.

This, of course, doesn't excuse Ubuntu for spoon-feeding its users an unreliable (as you claim) Wi-fi network manager utility.

Veering off-topic: I defend Ubuntu out of principle, and because I see it being unfairly maligned by bloggers and journalists who zoom in on easy targets of criticism (see my posts above), but I don't even use {U,Ku,Xu,Edu}buntu - I was introduced to Slackware in 2004 and I've never looked back (but that's a whole different topic!). ;-)

Ubuntu Linux: Built-in apps get an "A", wireless support an "F" (CNET)

Posted Jan 5, 2008 9:20 UTC (Sat) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]

Without firmware, the card wouldn't work, period.  My two cards work with 
the commandline tools, but not with network-manager.  One is a Netgear, 
that works only with ndiswrapper.  The other is a Ralink, for which there 
is a company-supplied linux driver that requires a firmware blob, but I 
found that ndiswrapper worked better.

Ubuntu Linux: Built-in apps get an "A", wireless support an "F" (CNET)

Posted Jan 5, 2008 17:32 UTC (Sat) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link]

I can't speak for the Netgear, but I have ralink gear (specifically an rt2500). The hardware
seems fine enough, but the reason it won't work with NetworkManager is that the driver does
not conform to the standard Linux Wireless Extensions API that NM uses to talk to network
interfaces.

Ubuntu Linux: Built-in apps get an "A", wireless support an "F" (CNET)

Posted Jan 5, 2008 18:05 UTC (Sat) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

There are two sets of drivers for ralink devices.

One is the 'legacy' version that is based on the drivers open sourced by Ralink, which
themselves seem to be Windows drivers ported to Linux. These have problems with non-x86
platforms and require the use of the Rultit program to configure them. These have been
continously been improved over time, fixing bugs, and such, but the main focus of development
have been making more Linux-like drivers.

The main issue people have with those drivers in distributions like Ubuntu is that
Network-manager sucks and pretty much takes over the devices. To use them you have to disable
network manager and use the Rutlit program. Give me a whole 10 minutes with a machine and I
can make the legacy drivers easily surpass the Ndiswapper bullshit. (hint: Get rid of the
drivers supplied by Ubuntu, compile a cvs snapshot, and disable network-manager)

The second version of the drivers are from the Rt2x00 project (which are the same people
improving the 'legacy' drivers). These drivers are based on the mac80211 protocol stack,
originally released by Dscape.

These drivers are faster, most stable, and use less resources then the legacy drivers or
ndiswrapper. They also support more then just x86. And they work with newer versions of
Network-manager.

Eventually they will be much more capable, too. Supporting advanced configurations and doing
all sorts of fancy stuff. (multiple virtual wifi interfaces, hostap-style stuff, packet
injection, etc) But obviously the development is focused on making these things 'just work'
for the vast majority of users and uses (ie: you have a PC you want to connect to a encrypted
wireless network with a USB dongle or mini-pc card.)

For most of the Ralink devices, (except for the rt73 stuff, I think) they will have the
mac80211-based drivers integrated into the 2.6.24 kernel. Now that this has been done it
should be much much easier to bring new devices to Linux.

The whole Mac80211 and related tools pretty much fixes the mistakes Linux developers made
years ago with supporting wireless drivers. (treating them as simple ethernet devices that use
airwaves instead of twisted pair wires, rather then a whole new class of software controlled
radio devices) All in all it will be much easier to bring full-featured drivers to Linux
distributions. These drivers should be simplier, support all the features that mac80211
supports, and have unified userspace tools for managing all of this stuff.

Ubuntu Linux: Built-in apps get an "A", wireless support an "F" (CNET)

Posted Jan 5, 2008 18:47 UTC (Sat) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link]

Right, I should have made clear that I was talking about the 'legacy' drivers (rt2500 in my case).

I tried rt2x00 a while back, but never got it working without crashes. Eventually I switched back to my other wireless device (a prism54 card, which had its own driver odyssey, from prism54 to islsm to p54, which works great).

I just noticed that both p54 and rt2x00 are showing up in linus' kernel tree so it appears that they will be included in 2.6.24. Meaning that all the people who currently curse at NM for not supporting their ralink devices can stop once they upgrade to 2.6.24. :)

Ubuntu Linux: Built-in apps get an "A", wireless support an "F" (CNET)

Posted Jan 5, 2008 11:47 UTC (Sat) by roblucid (subscriber, #48964) [Link]

If you try in forums to help these folk get b43xx cards working, the 
fwcutter stuff seems to be known.  Some cards work, some partially work 
some of time and others not at all.

Probably the responder,  using the utility tools is right, and that bugs 
(or lack of options) in higher level tools, stop the naive user seeing 
when the underlying stuff operates.

Ubuntu Linux: Built-in apps get an "A", wireless support an "F" (CNET)

Posted Jan 5, 2008 8:27 UTC (Sat) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link]

I've also had great problems getting WiFi to work with Linux using Ubuntu 7.10 - I tried three
PCMCIA cards and ended up using a 3Com USB WiFi stick.  The problem isn't just WiFi but
ensuring that WPA can be configured as well - some cards support only WEP under Linux which is
useless for real security.

I wasn't using network-manager since this was with Xubuntu - I found that wicd worked fairly
well, but its diagnostics on failure to connect are quite poor, and I have to boot from
scratch with the WiFi stick inserted.

Ubuntu Linux: Built-in apps get an "A", wireless support an "F" (CNET)

Posted Jan 5, 2008 17:49 UTC (Sat) by boudewijn (subscriber, #14185) [Link]

I stopped using KUbuntu on my Thinkpad X61t because it would switch off 
the wireless card after a few hours -- and only rebooting could make it 
switch on again.

Ubuntu Linux: Built-in apps get an "A", wireless support an "F" (CNET)

Posted Jan 5, 2008 22:05 UTC (Sat) by rvfh (subscriber, #31018) [Link]

In my case, when Network Manager fails to reconnect to my wireless network, the solution is
'sudo rmmod iwl4965' and 'sudo modprobe iwl4963', but yeah, something's still broken in that
otherwise not so bad piece of software...

Hope that might help someone...

Ubuntu Linux: Built-in apps get an "A", wireless support an "F" (CNET)

Posted Jan 10, 2008 16:03 UTC (Thu) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link]

Now that I use wicd I find the standard kernel driver for zd1211 works fine.  The only
connectivity problems I've had turned out to be bugs in the DD-WRT Linux access points I use,
where the binary 'nas' process dies, killing WDS links in the process.  This is another aspect
of the same problem, i.e. Broadcom using binary drivers and userspace programs on the WRT54G
and similar routers.  Until we get open source for everything in DD-WRT and other WiFi router
distros, it's tough to debug this sort of problem.