desktoplinux.com — When it comes to troublesome Linux peripherals, WiFi takes the cake. Sparked by the Portland Project's efforts to bring standardization to the Linux desktop, the Linux wireless developer community tackled this problem at its second Linux Wireless Summit last month in London.
Feb 7, 2007 View in Crawl 4
adml_shakeFeb 9, 2007
yeah 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.
msheaFeb 9, 2007
This 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.
xvampirexFeb 9, 2007
Ask that your wifi manufacturer, see what they tell you.
Closed AccountFeb 9, 2007
i remember something like a NDISwrapper GUI implemented in knoopix or kanotix some time ago. will check it out again.
duxxyukFeb 9, 2007
I 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.
gmorganFeb 9, 2007
The 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).
gmorganFeb 9, 2007
They'll give you some bulls**t 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.
gmorganFeb 9, 2007
The 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.