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Ubuntu Linux: Built-in apps get an "A", wireless support an "F" (CNET)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)In reply to: Ubuntu Linux: Built-in apps get an "A", wireless support an "F" (CNET) by rsidd Parent article: Ubuntu Linux: Built-in apps get an "A", wireless support an "F" (CNET)
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!). ;-)
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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.
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