Wireless in Linux: one idiot's opinion
When my Orinoco WaveLAN Silver PCMCIA card "just worked" with every single Linux distribution I tried, I was happy.
When two el-cheapo cards from Airlink 101 didn't work with every single Linux distribution I tried, and still didn't work when I resorted to ndiswrapper and a console, I was unhappy.
Native drivers for the Airlink adapters (the most recent I've owned being an AWLL3028 USB model with the Realtek 8187b chipset) would help. A way of using ndiswrapper as sane as the one in Puppy Linux would also help.
I know -- A $10 wireless adapter with no guarantee of working with Linux is just buying trouble, albeit cheaply. I could've bought a used AWLL3026 Airlink adapter and been pig-in-shit happy; that one's supposed to work. Nobody told Fry's, where the 3028s look just like the 3026s, but have an entirely different chipset.
And I know the Linux kernel will catch up with the AWLL3028 eventually. But I have this damn thing now. And I want it to work -- with WPA, the whole shebang -- NOW.
I've been pretty lucky with wired Ethernet in Linux. There's never been a time when it hasn't worked. Wireless should be the same. Apple gets around the problem by only supporting its own wireless adapters. Microsoft has the whole industry writing multiple drivers for every product. And still I've had problems with wireless in Windows.
This is a chance for Linux -- and the Linux community to do it right. The more support at the kernel level, as well as in the surrounding applications in every distribution, the better.
So either we make it all plug-and-play -- and publicize the hell out of which exact wireless equipment is compatible, or we have native drivers and an easy way to install them.
Hardware detection and configuration is important, and wireless is a huge part of that. Linux can win with it, but it sure can't win without it.
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Steven Rosenberg aims to learn what he does not know. He writes about it here.
Steven Rosenberg aims to learn what he does not know. He writes about it here.
I agree. Time to make an official "linux compatible hardware" list. And not only the chipset. It's a pain to find a USB wifi dongle that works, if you don't know where and how to look.
Ubuntu has done a great job when it comes to wireless connection. But then again if you have a broadcom wireless card and you come from a windows background then you are stuck like chuck. You will have to open the terminal. I still beleive Linux has a long way to go.
Wow.
So your opinion is that Linux should support more hardware.
This is ground-breaking. I'd urge you to be careful, though - any further out on that limb and you may fall off.
Antix set-up without a hitch my Airlink 101 USB ethernet adapter:
http://antix.mepis.org/index.php/Main_Page
> any further out on that limb and you may fall off
It's a bit more nuanced than that. It's nice that wireless adapters sold in 2006 finally get rolled into the kernel in 2008, but getting today's wireless drivers into today's kernels is just not happening. Ndiswrapper is not a viable solution. Even if a device isn't supported by default in the kernel, there should be more of an effort made to get manufacturers to write and release Linux drivers for their equipment.
I'm saying that it's not all sunshine and moonbeams -- and all the users who aren't uber-geeks hit a real, insurmountable wall when they can't get wireless working and all that's there to help them are the not-always-working experiences of other users.
Microsoft has the whole industry writing multiple drivers for every product. And still I've had problems with wireless in Windows.
You think it will be better for Linux?
Try this next time.
http://www.linuxquestions.org/hcl/index.php/cat/10
Once I bought the ASUS WL-167g USB wi-fi card. However, it was troublesome to use it in different distros.
Then I trowed the towel and I bought another ASUS WL-107g wi-fi card, but this time it was PCMCIA. Before I actually spent the money I made sure the seller at my local shop knew that I'm specifically buying a card for using it in Linux. And in the case of problems I would be able to exchange the card for another one.
This little beauty had the manual referencing the drivers for Red Hat so I was almost sure it should work. And in fact it did. Plug-and-Play, or rather Plug-and-Forget. It Just Works (tm).
Here's my opinion: state clearly your intent and buy compatible wireless equipment. Or at least make sure you can return it.
I have a Airlink 101 model AWLL3028 USB adapter, purchased for $10.00 at Fry's, and it is working just fine using Zenwalk 4.8. Of course, it's using the Window's driver through the NDISwrapper, but it seems to work with Linux here as good as with Windows. This distro provides a GUI interface for setting up the network devices, including wireless, and all that was needed was to specify using the NDISwrapper and to point it to the proper ".inf" file found on the setup CD which came with the adapter. When setting it up I chose the Windows 2000 file, only later I read somewhere that the XP file is recommended (donno why). But, the 2000 driver seems to work just fine. I haven't needed to setup the WAP or WEP (the wireless network is in a rural location and just uses static IP addresses and distance for security), so I don't know if that works or not.
I set up this "wireless network" that I'm connected to using a old computer and BrazilFW. When I went to buy a PCI wireless card to go into this router I spent a lot of effort determining a model which I was sure would work painlessly using Linux (not just Linux, but the precompiled 2.4 kernels which come with the BFW setup). You either make the effort up front before buying some piece of hardware, or risk having it just not work under Linux. And it will stay that way. There just isn't sufficient added revenue to hardware companies to develop Linux drivers for their hardware products.