What is Digg?40 Comments
- subxero37, on 10/12/2007, -0/+18What's dial-up?
- JonForTheWin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+18Right now Linux and *BSD have the best wifi support (master mode, monitor mode, etc, which you just can't get (with rare exceptions) on proprietary operating systems). The people who make the broadcom chips are (in part) to blame for the bad rap because they refuse to cooperate / help us use hardware motherboard manufacturers and users pay them to make.
- rockforever, on 10/12/2007, -2/+15WiFi is the only reason I don't use completely switch to linux on my laptop.
- dbr_onix, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13"but OS X is proprietary with a flavor of BSD and the wifi support is comprehensive"
The reason OS X's wifi is so "comprehensive" is largely because it's a fairly limited range of hardware - Developers know what sort of hardware will be in the machine they're coding for. Anyway, Linux WiFi support has gotten pretty good lately, about a year ago I had problems getting any distro to recognize my IPW2200, now nearly all distros work with it nicely with no fiddling.
Hm, wouldn't a nice, unified interface for NDISWrapper solve a *lot* of wireless problems?
It seems when ever someone says they cannot get a wireless card working, NDISWrapper is suggested, but ususally with a bunch of fairly-confusing (albeit simple commands, like ndiswrapper -i location/of/driver.inf or something) terminal commands.
If you could shove a CD in, click a button saying "Install drivers from CD", and it NDISWrapper'ifies them and suddenly your wireless card works, which is nearly the "Windows way" (Insert hardware, boot computer, insert driver-CD and install them) which a lot of people are used too.
It's something that would *have* to be included in the OS by default to be useful, if it's something you need to download, or search around for to set up right, it wont work, seeing as how you need the wireless card working to learn how to get the wireless card working.. It's like needing to "press any key to enable the keyboard"
[Note : An NDISWrapper UI may exist, but I've never seen one included by default in a distro like Fedora Core, Ubuntu etc - which it would have to be were it to be useful..]
- Ben - sprucegum, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Proprietary code in my Linux? That's like putting ketchup in my Kraft Dinner!
I don't have the coding skills to fix it myself so I'll Just whine about it.
:P - dallashigh, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Man, getting wireless cards running under Linux is rough. I mean, my integrated chip and one of my CardBus cards has native support BUILT-IN to the kernel, and the third card has a native Linux driver that can be compiled with the kernel or separately. They really should make it easier.
- cawpin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Do you have networkmanager installed? It has everything you said wasn't there. It works great on my laptop running plain Ubuntu.
- cecil_t, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Thought I'd go ahead and throw a few links out there for mini-PCI wireless cards for laptops that work in Linux:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/CustratingReview.asp?item=N82E16833173005
http://www.newegg.com/Product/CustratingReview.asp?Item=N82E16833106221
They're pretty easy to swap out too, pretty much anybody should be able to do it on their laptop in 5 or 10 minutes with a small screwdriver. - adml_shake, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5yeah this and drivers for my dial up modem on my laptop have been my 2 biggest issues for a long time, and keeping me from running linux full time.
- loof, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6I tried messed around with linux on my laptop a couple times but the lack of wireless support killed it for me everytime.
- malkir, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Does anyone understand the mentality of NOT open sourcing drivers for wifi? It's not as if people pay for the wireless drivers. People just want hardware that works.
- geronimo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I think I've dealt with most every wireless linux problem known to man but I'm still open minded, I'm sure there are a few errors I havent yet encountered..
At this point I just use ndiswrapper and wpa_supplicant, they always do the job which is a big change from the past.
Although the rt2500-based chips are well supported now, with wpa even, kudos to the rt2500 makers in Taiwan, they open sourced their drivers. You can get every wireless card working with linux, be it w/ ndiswrapper or native drivers. - incabulos, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6@ JonForTheWin
I'm probably splitting hairs here, but OS X is proprietary with a flavor of BSD and the wifi support is comprehensive. For example Kismac has reverse engineered the passive mode driver for the native Apple Airport cards which are Broadcom based chipsets.
For those who don't follow this regularly, Broadcom refuses to open up it's driver and hardware specs to the community, thus forcing them to reverse engineer the drivers or chose a different chipset. As a result, Linux, BSDs, and OSS company prefer to use PRISM2's more open chipsets for wifi. - computerdude33, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Does it make the tubes smaller?
- linville, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I'm not sure that quote of me about cfg80211 is really accurate. But close enough I suppose...
- mikedoth, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4dbr_onix
There is a interface for ndiswrapper. Look up ndiswrapper in Synaptic and I think it's the first download. I'm just not sure if it works 100%. - GMorgan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3The problem with NDISwrapper is the same as that with 3D drivers. Binary blobs cannot be legally supported out of the box. Sure it can be worked around but it is better to get real drivers working (which largely they do now).
- theWrkncacnter, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Currently the best thing to do is buy an atheros card, if you know you need it to work in Linux. Some types of netgear cards use atheros, I think.
- tulsapoke, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2My Intel Centrino seems to work out of the box for most distros I have tried. That is why I picked it as a $20 upgrade over the Broadcom default.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I always have trouble with hooking up wifi in linux. Hopefully, they will set a standard.
- Mejogid, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Sure, cards with native drivers tend to work atleast aswell if not better than in Windows under Linux. On the other hand if you're stuck with a laptop with an unsupported card or one with out of date/badly written drivers, wireless can be a complete pain in the ass.
I too have a fully supported laptop, which works fantastically, but I also have one that flat out refuses to work apart from on specific builds of ndis-wrapper with an old version of the windows driver (that took me quite a while to figure out, surprisingly, and many would have given up by that stage). - XVampireX, on 10/12/2007, -5/+7If in Israel, I'll be there, even though I'm not really a linux hacker... I would like to see how they work things out there. I hope it's an open summit :)
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2i remember something like a NDISwrapper GUI implemented in knoopix or kanotix some time ago. will check it out again.
- GMorgan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2They'll give you some ***** about not legally being allowed to open broadcasting technology in some countries. They miss the point, they can open it for the ones where it is legal and we can just disclaim the use of OSS drivers in the countries that make it illegal. Practically what we do with the software patent mess now.
Really it's just an excuse to be conservative. - mshea, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2This is the one thing I can't get to work in my new Kubuntu box. I can't even find a really good list of known available PCI cards that are natively compatible with Linux.
- cecil_t, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Yeah I ended up buying a different mini-PCI wireless card for my laptop that was more Linux friendly; you can pick them up pretty cheap ($20-30) at newegg or wherever.
- duxxyuk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I think there are two issues here.
1: it's true that getting WiFi working correctly under linux is _not _ easy like in windows or OSX. I for one cannot get WPA working. Not only are the configuration files difficult to use any interface I have tried on Gnome or KDE has not worked.
2: The second issue is that of drivers. BROADCOMM are really the very worst of all culprits as they categorically refuse to create drivers for Linux which kind of leaves us Linux users out in the dark. We have two possibilities :
a. reverse engineer the broadcomm drivers of OS X (the nearest OS to Linux) which I'm sure the BROADCOMM would not appreciate or...
b. use an emulation layer (the brilliant ndiswrapper) and the windows drivers (that are completely different to linux drivers) . This approach reduces the kernel stability and in some cases limits the functionality (I can't put my card in Passive mode for example, nor can I get WPA working)
Rant : Quite silly how Broadcomm have shot themselves in the foot, I for one know that their WiFi cards are software controlled radio transceivers but they should simply drop in a disclaimer against tinkering with non legal frequencies as opposed to simply cutting out a growing part of the IT community. - prammy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Actually if you get your native drivers to work (with firmware for the broadcom driver) you can use NetworkManager to manage your wireless connections very easily.
- LordofShadows, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I didnt realize I could use ndis on my broadcom chip back when it wasnt reverse engineered. But now that it's supported I see no problems using it. iwconfig and ifconfig are your friends!
- StickWST, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Yeah my old Compaq laptop is really slow on Windows, I switched to Xubuntu, but the wireless support is terrible and I hate it. no signal display, rarely works, and when it does I have to be virtually next to my router.
- XVampireX, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2JonForTheWin: What do you mean by that support?
- GMorgan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1NetworkManager is quite nice for handling WPA when you have drivers that support it properly. WiFi isn't brilliant in Windows either.
As for Broadcomm. It's their loss in the end. - GMorgan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The problem is many manufacturers change their specs on a whim without changing model numbers (this causes problems in Windows as well). I find the intel chips work well though you have to run binary microcode then.
- duxxyuk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1rmerrick = I do not agree with you. [I ask others in this forum to correct me if I'm wrong] ... I don't hear any news of any link between Broadcomm and the GNU...
- drag, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Yep I can also show you a ***** of video cards, printers, scanners, drive controllers, network controllers, and assorted other brick-n-brack that will never work in Windows XP-64, Vista, Vista-64, or any Windows 2003 version.
Hey, and Windows applications too. Although that is going to be mostly for Windows XP-64 and Windows 2003. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I can tell stories about scanners and printers that make wireless hardware look like as if it was made for linux.
- XVampireX, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Ask that your wifi manufacturer, see what they tell you.
- loof, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1That sounds silly....I'll have to work on that.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -14/+0They trued to hack into the emt:
http://digg.com/world_news/Ground_Zero_EMT_We_Were_Told_Building_7_Was_to_Be_Pulled - rmerrick, on 10/12/2007, -15/+1@JonForTheWin
>>"The people who make the broadcom chips are (in part) to blame for the bad rap because they refuse to cooperate..."
Don't go blaming Broadcom. They never promised compatibility or drivers for Linux. It is the Linux community who is responsible for drivers not the component manufacturers.
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