The OSS Solution to the Linux Wi-Fi Problem 204
tobs writes "Matt Hartley of MadPenguin.org fame has published an open source way of solving the Linux Wi-Fi problem. He writes, "For intermediate to advanced users, who are willing to track down WiFi cards based on chipsets, live without WPA in some instances or have opted to stick with Ethernet, buying a new notebook for the sake of improved wireless connectivity may seem a little overkill.
When a new user faces problems jumping through the NDISWrapper hoops, tracking down WiFi cards from HCLs and other related activities, the end result is almost always the same — they give up. What so many of us, as Linux users, fail to grasp is that projects like OpenHAL are critical to long-term development. The education on what to expect and what not to expect remains a complete load of hot air when articles claim how easy it is to setup wireless Internet on Linux machines. It's downright misleading."
Weird... (Score:5, Insightful)
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The question is, did the
Mod parent up. (Score:2)
That's right. I was expecting to read about how somebody solved the problem. But they're just blithering about it. No useful content here, move along.
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Now I must rest my mind.
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Re:Weird... Not really. Just another ad. carrier. (Score:2)
How this managed to get onto slashdot is beyond me.
Atheros (Score:5, Informative)
And any time someone new the *nix asks me about wireless, and why it isn't working, I always insist they spend the $20 on the Atheros chipset, as, again, it is damn near flawless.
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I use a D-Link AirPlus G model DWL-G630 on my laptop running Dapper Drake. It has the Atheros chipset, but it doesn't support WPA, just WEP in Ubuntu. Other than that, it works fine.
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"The Atheros HAL on MIPS uses %s7 as a general purpose register, but the rest of the kernel uses it to store the value of curlwp. Sam won't recompile the HAL for us (fair enough), and we can't modify the HAL to use another register because doing so could put us in breach of the license (v. crappy). So, do a save/set/restore on %s7 in KernIntr() and in the stubs that the HAL uses to call back into the kernel.
"Please note that diffs are not public domain; they are subject to the copyright notices on the relevant files."
More info here [nabble.com].
I suggest Ralink-based chipsets as an alternative. I have a couple in OpenBSD-based machines, and one in
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It's no different than buying a PC from Dell and then expecting to be able to run Mac OS X on it. If you want to run certain software, you have to buy hardware that it's compatible with.
Re:Atheros names/brands/sources would be nice (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Time and money. (Score:2)
--
My friend, you just hit the main reason I have an Ubuntu laptop. I had an older IBM Thinkpad. It was running Windows 2000. It got to the point when I would go to a meeting and someone wanted to give me a copy of their report or presentation, I could not read their thumbdrive. It was most of
I Call BS! (Score:3, Interesting)
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At least OSX by virtue of their control of the hardware, generally just work. But adding wifi to an older mac can be a pain.
That aside OS X has its own neurotic issues all its own. For example, if you join a WPA network, and then the admin changes the WPA password OS X is just mental to update the password on.
If you connect to a network via the 'automatic wizard' you get presented the option of storing the password in the keychain;
What's the REAL Solution though? (Score:5, Interesting)
What confuses me so much (and I really am ignorant in this department) is why the ethernet chipsets were seemingly conquered right off the bat? I tried my first Linux distro (debian) in 2001 and ever since then no matter what the machine, no matter what the distro, no matter how confused I was the NICs always came up ready to go when I installed Linux. I've done this on a lot of machines, from obscure to well known Dells and used most of the major distributions. They just 'worked' and it was good.
Now, wireless is here and for some reason, there must be a thousand different manufacturers with their own proprietary chipsets with completely different drivers & BIOS data on the flash memory stored in those chips because I've only had Ubuntu work once out of the box on a Linksys PCI WiFi card. Why? Why isn't that standardized? What do the companies gain from that? Is it because of the ever changing standards that the chips are so wacky? Is it because the A, B, G, N, etc. protocols? I don't understand this because I've never coded drivers.
I understand what MadWiFi & OpenHal are trying to do. I now know to look for "Atheros" chipsets when I buy my wireless stuff but they are often more well known brands and more expensive. A reason I switched to Linux was to save money in college, not spend more on the hardware.
Maybe a more helpful article would be detailing the real underlying issue--that these no name brands that get huge rebates at CompUSA or where ever (Hawking Technologies, generic boxes, etc.) are targeting Windows because of the number of users. How do you change their minds or show them a market for an OSS driver? Is there a way to even open up a channel of communication with them to discover how to write drivers for their chispets? How do you convince them it's worth their time/resources?
That would be a solution moving forward.
The next best thing would be to post an article about how to get started making these drivers. I'm a coder (though not the greatest one) with a little bit of free time. How do I start? How do I get access to the BIOS pages on the chipsets? What do I do with that, how does the Linux kernel use it? What books do I read that teach me how to start with a chipset I know nothing about, have no resources on the data or mechanics and then poke it, prod it until I know enough about it that I can set it up for the kernel to use it?
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In the early years of Ethernet, NICs made by 3COM, IBM etc were very expensive. Novell, which was pushing NetWare hard at the time saw that they would benefit from having cheap ether cards out there. So they made their own card and sold it essentially at cost. Novell was not in the business of making a profit selling NICs, they were in the business of selling NetWar
Re:What's the REAL Solution though? (Score:5, Informative)
Because wireless hardware is really complicated.
Typically a wireless card is a microcontroller with ROM, RAM, and a CPU --- usually an ARM. One end is plugged into the radio, of which there are a zillion different varieties. The other end is plugged into your computer.
Some wireless cards don't have their software on ROM --- which means that in order to make it work, the first thing you have to do is to upload the software from your PC. This is the infamous 'binary blob' problem. That software is highly proprietry and really, really hard to write. So far (although I could be wrong) there are no open source firmware replacements.
Even once you have the card programmed and running, you still need to talk to it. This usually involves a driver that needs to know how to talk to the wireless card's host hardware (the bit between the microcontroller and your computer), the firmware itself (which may have different command sets for different versions of the firmware), and sometimes you even need to know implementation details of the radio chipset. That's a lot of information you need access to, and it all interacts in rather horrible ways. (Also, FCC regulations may mean that the vendors aren't allowed to give you information that could be used to, say, make the card operate on unauthorised frequencies...)
It also doesn't help that the Linux wireless layer isn't terribly well designed: the abstraction layers are in the wrong place, which means that in order to write a driver you have to duplicate a lot of code. That's one reason why the BSD operating systems typically have better wireless support. Their driver framework makes it a lot easier to write wireless drivers.
The good cards usually have well-designed firmware on ROM with a sufficiently abstract interface that implementation details aren't exposed. They're easy to support, because the vendor can change the implementation without having to change the driver. The bad cards have firmware that's loaded at run time that exposes lots of implementation details that the vendor can't tell you about because the third party whose radio chipset they're using made them sign an NDA. (Or just because they don't want to. Broadcom fits this category.) They require lots of unpleasant reverse engineering.
So, in short, wireless drivers are hard because wireless cards are really complicated.
Re:What's the REAL Solution though? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Frankly, its a shame that you can't get the equivalent of a PCI (or PCI-X) "wireless bridge". I would love a DD-WRT box that went into my system, and managed all aspects of my networking for me, addressable via some kind of internal IP address scheme.
This would give you all sorts of cool abilities; control it via your browser or any sort of "internal" application (something like Apple's airport stuff).
Hell, even given basic engineering skills this wouldn't take mor
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Hmm, surely the "infamous 'binary blob'" problems is where you are running a binary blob on your computer's CPU (like nVidia drivers, or HAL). Thi
Re:What's the REAL Solution though? (Score:4, Insightful)
Ah, but the firmware on the wireless card is running, effectively, at a higher privilege level than your kernel --- it can do things totally outside the kernel's control. Even if you are legally allowed to redistribute the image, how do you know what it's doing? Given that all your network traffic is passing through that thing, and that it's got complete unsupervised control over all the radio bandwidth it can eat, and that on some interfaces (such as PCI) they can even access host memory... there's a lot of scope for malicious behaviour. Without source, they can't be audited. That's what I mean by the binary blob problem.
(The firmware source code probably includes lots of deeply patented and proprietry frequency-hopping and radio control software, which the FCC would be deeply unamused to have people play with; most likely there's also going to be a third-party embedded operating system, too, to make it all go. It would probably be a legal nightmare to release source.)
(You're right in that there's not much difference between uploaded firmware and firmware in ROM --- it's just a variation of the same problem.)
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Here's an idea: on one card, combine a wired network controller (RTL8139 or whatever) with a wireless bridge. It'd be like plugging a bridge into the network jack, but everything's already in one place. Conceptually, it's not much different than the way internal modems used to be built: combine a serial interface and the guts of an external modem on one board. Just as the internal modem appeared to your computer as j
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So as long as the concept is improved upon by having a separate antenna, why not go even a step beyond that and use whole separate radio?
Newegg, for ins
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A better anology would be a particular type of car engine which if it's not tuned just right produces large quantities of highly toxic gas --- you really don't want to have people tinkering with those. A misprogrammed wireless card is quite capable of jamming all other cards in its vicinity. It's the FCC's responsibility to ensure that
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There are a couple of reasons. First, there is a history behind ethernet. The specs were at times more open on chips. There were standards that people would adhere to (like the NE1000, if I remember the name right). On top of that, there is the fact there is nothing harmful in an ethernet card. Worst case: you pollute the network.
With WiFi cards, many of them are basically software defined radios. On top of that, there are 11 channels of which only some are legally usable in each country. So if you exposed
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What confuses me so much (and I really am ignorant in this department) is why the ethernet chipsets were seemingly conquered right off the bat?
Heh. I suppose it might look that way from the perspective of someone starting at Linux from 2001. As I remember it, getting ethernet support was a very similar battle, and I started with linux in 1994. There certainly was some reverse engineering that had to take place back then. Until only the last 5 years I've been surprised when ethernet "just works". I susp
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Install Windows.
(Turnabout is fair play.)
Misconceptions and miscalculations. (Score:2)
As for being aggravated for spending in hardware, add up how much it would cost you to have equivalent versions of all the software you use in Linux and soon you will realize that the few bucks you spend in a Wireless card pale in comparison with the spiraling costs of running a Windows machine.
I'm not sure what TFA is saying (Score:2)
Now all laptops come with built in wifi things are even harder. I really don't want to be choosing my laptop based on what wifi chipset it uses (or having a card sticking out the si
The Dells I've had, and some of the HP's... (Score:2)
I agree (Score:3, Insightful)
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Editing files has nothing to do with it. Generally, Under Linux, Wifi falls in three catagories. Those that do work. Those that work with NDISwrapper, and those that don't work. Those that work with NDIS wrapper NDIS wrapper installs the drive for you. Those that work out of the box will simply work out of the box. Those that don't work will sit there and stare at you and do nothing. There is a minor special exception for the BCM 43xx, you hav
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If you mean you manually point ndis at the
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LOL. You don't need to spend your time studying the innards of Linux any more than you would with any operating system. Just buy supported hardware. That's what "IT professionals" do, as does any reasonably informed consumer.
Granted, most hardware is designed for Windows, but then again, mo
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Take the time to buy the right hardware... (Score:5, Insightful)
I just installed Fedora 7, and I am managing multiple wireless networks with NetworkManager, no configuration at all. Zilch.
Of course, I have a 5 year old Dell. People think they can buy whatever hardware they want and just have it work. No. You have to be selective. That's why my 3D desktop runs on Intel video.
Buy companies that support open source from the beginning, dammit, or other companies will never see the use of providing drivers or specs PERIOD.
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5 year old intel video? for 3D? *cringe*
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The horror!
"Buy companies that support open source from the beginning"
I want an operating system, not a political movement.
Re:Take the time to buy the right hardware... (Score:4, Insightful)
then support that operating system by buying hardware that it is allowed to interact with by the vendor. activism is also sometimes pragmatic you know.
Re:Take the time to buy the right hardware... (Score:4, Informative)
Richard Stallman didn't want a political movement either. He wanted to work around a flaky printer [faifzilla.org]. Unfortunately, reality can be such that a political movement is necessary in order to obtain the things that many of us think should be able to be taken for granted.
You have options. (Score:2)
I want an operating system, not a political movement.
Windows, OSX, HPUX, AIX.
Your choice.
If you use Linux you are buying into an ideology of how to ensure users are free to modify the software they are using. Don't like it? Don't use it, quite simple frankly, or use a distribution where you get a list of supported hardware and a provider with whom to whine, at least you would be paying for the privilege and would expect some service from your hard earned cash.
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And this is why you're not going to be on the desktop.
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Of course, you are right, but that's the problem here. Having Linux increase market share on the desktop means reaching the people who don't know jack about hardware (or software, or computers in general outside the realm of word processing and web surfing). Most of these people would have no clue know where to start trying to determine a particular piece of hardware's Linux compatibility. That's
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And they're generally right, because most people run Winblows.
If your preferred solution is to use stone age hardware, much as the Pilgrims must have done, then why aren't you running BSD?
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Of course, I have a 5 year old Dell. People think they can buy whatever hardware they want and just have it work. No.
Not to troll, but Windows users have been able to do this for the past 15 years. People who know nothing about hardware, engineering, recompiling kernels, or editing config files have been able to install hardware in Windows since Windows 95. Granted, a lot of the cheap hardware had buggy drivers, but they could at least get it to work for a while.
What gets me is that the Linux com
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On what planet exactly? End user distros have been auto-detecting hardware for at least several years now. On average I'd even say that given a bare computer plus a Windows CD and a Ubuntu CD you're more likely to have everyting work on Ubuntu.
And just recently, I bought an ASUS motherboard, and tried to install Slackware 12.0 on it. And you know what happened? The kernel hangs after re
It's one of the three big weaknesses (Score:3, Insightful)
Are the three things I get embarassed talking about when trying to promote Linux to non-technical friends and family. All they want it "to do stuff". As the article mentions, they won't spend time fiddling with drivers, checking if the hardware will/might/won't work.
They have a real expectation that they can plug in whatever they choose to a PC and it will just work. This is their experience of (modern) MS and they won't accept any less from an alternative.
Until peripherals become seemlessly operable ordinary people will steer clear of Linux.
Until the applications (and I mean video playing in particular) just work, with no drama and no crashes (Kaffeine, why do you insist on popping up messages saying "The specified file or URL was not found", when you're playing it?) we're backing a loser.
Not a bad analysis... (Score:2)
This will slowly change as Linux gains desktop traction and Vista drives users toward The P
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Video? Granted, I had to install some extra codecs via Applications->Add/Remove Software, but that's not more difficult than telling someone to download DivX or a codec pack. I've been playing video almost every day on my Linux box (I download a lot of anime fansubs) and it has worked fine since 2002/2003. Today I can setup the codecs in 10 seconds. Just what are you talking about?
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Yeah, pick the easy one :-)
OK, now do the same with a webcam.
If you're lucky, it'll start up once - assuming you have an application that will display it's output. Remember I'm talking about "Plug it in. See the picture."
Now unplug the webcam and stick it back in. Maybe in the same USB slot, maybe in another.
Even with notionally supported webcams (Philips models) I've never managed
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And when he said video, I'm assuming he was talking about capturing and editing video, not playing WMV files. I have heard this is an area where Linux lags far behind XP and OSX, but it's also an area about which I am completely ignorant .
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WiFi has actually been improving greatly in the past year, since there was somebody act
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Agreed with most of these points, but what's wrong with video? I've never had video under Linux give me problems--in fact, under Ubuntu, I found it far easier than playing videos on Linux.
WiFi, though, is definitely an issue, as is Plug-N-Play. I would also add printing to the list. Note that I don't have a printer at home, but my friend told me it was a bitch for him to get his printer running under Linux. Has it gotten any better?
Agreed 100% about the drama and crashes...like another poster said, m
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If they won't spend a little time finding out what hardware will work well with Linux then they should stick to Windows XP (but not Win2k or Vista because they both have the same problem). That's Ok, really. There are plenty of users out there who are savy enough to use Google and plenty more will get a Linux geek to take care of this sort of thing for them. There are even some who will (shudder) just go out and
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There's Still a Problem With Wireless? (Score:4, Informative)
Seriously, I think the article is trying to find a solution in the wrong area. If I want a laptop and I plan to use Linux (which I always do) then I plan to get a wifi card compatible with such. I have no idea how ndiswrapper works and have no plans to ever use it.
My most recent notebook - an HP/Compaq nw9440 - came with the option of a Broadcom or an Intel wireless card. I went with Intel for the simple fact that I know intel works.
Sure enough, wireless was up and running as soon as I installed SUSE 10.2 on the machine. (It initially came with Vista but I upgraded pretty quickly.)
The answer to WiFi is to ensure the manufacturers supply drivers - open source or not - to their chipsets, since they're no longer putting them in the firmware. Intel does. I believe Broadcom is now. Anybody else?
End of story.
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What I meant is that many people are in different situations. Many people who are not considering Linux this week might in couple of months.
This means that many people will wake up some day, want to install Linux and realize that Linux can or cannot manage their hardware. They will react in different ways : fix the problem by using the ndiswrapper, installing other hardware, go back to Windows or OS X etc.
So, buying the right hardware from the start is on
Huh? (Score:2)
Whatever happened to WLAN_NG? (Score:3)
Major Pain (Score:2, Insightful)
I had read that WiFi has "solved" in the latest release of Ubuntu and have long been wireless in my home network, even for the desktop machines.
After trying all the non-NDISWRAPPER options, I finally used that tool and was able to get WiFi up and running, but even with that, it fails to initialize properly about half the time and I have to manually restart networking.
Combined with not having support for the latest NVIDIA drivers available through the package manager and
Buy Intel (Score:4, Informative)
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Buying a new laptop? No way! (Score:3, Interesting)
http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/zd1211rw/devices [linuxwireless.org]
You only need the device, a vanilla kernel and firmware, which can be downloaded from SourceForge.net, and it's also probably available for your distribution as an official package.
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=129083&package_id=187875 [sourceforge.net]
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Congratulations, my friend. You have reached enlightenment! Despite what some people would have you believe, Linux hardware support is actually really good. There are also plenty of vendors, even of wireless chipsets, who cooperate with th
package it up (Score:3, Insightful)
Ndiswrapper works very well, once it's set up. Kudos to the team for their efforts.
The thing I find interesting about all this. . . (Score:3, Funny)
WiFi is an expression of exactly the opposite. Microwave signals are a bad idea for a number of reasons.
--Here's a neat item worth considering. . .
The Neurophone, (look it up), demonstrated that one could transmit messages via electrical impulse through the skin and have those messages understood by the subconscious. When the subject being programmed is in a dissociative state, (you are in a dissociative state when you watch TV or play a video game), it was demonstrated that one could send instructions to the subconscious through the skin and thereby implant hypnotic suggestions. Subjects would follow these suggestions, believing them to be their own thoughts and ideas. They'd never heard the instructions given to them verbally. They had received them by direct electrical impulse. This isn't science fiction.
Okay. So cellphones, when outputting a 10 htz modulated signal, can directly buzz the brain with much the same effect. What a great system for delivering instructions!
Mind control is frighteningly easy. Heck, the Russians figured out how to beam voices directly into a person's head using EM back in the sixties.
WiFi in my house and on all the time? Um. . , gee, no thanks. There's enough garbage signal floating around my town as it is without beaming my own personalized source through my own home 24/7.
Now people will argue with this up and down. Fair enough. They can make their own decisions and refuse to acknowledge the information available. They don't want to be laughed at. But the cool thing is that Linux, for a number of reasons, is incompatible with this mode of social control. --You have to really really want it to microwave your head before it will comply. Now don't you think that's interesting? I sure do!
If you refuse to follow the leader and refuse to install your very own mind-control device in your home, then, well by gum, you don't even need a tin-foil hat. Bonus!
How sure are you that the impulses which guide you to follow self-destructive, limiting patterns at key moments of your life are really coming from within yourself?
The Matrix has you. Have a nice day!
-FL
Clarification. (Score:3, Informative)
The Neurophone, (look it up), demonstrated that one could transmit messages via electrical impulse through the skin and have those messages understood by the subconscious. When the subject being programmed is in a dissociative state, (you are in a dissociative state when you watch TV or play a video game), it was demonstrated that one could send instructions
Snug as a bug. . . (Score:2)
You are talking utter, utter, shit.
Actually, I wish I was. Seriously. Take ten minutes out of your busy day to look it up. Or don't. Your level of awareness is your problem and nobody else's. But ugly realities can't be changed through ridicule or denial. That just serves to paint a big juicy target on one's bottom while their head is snug in the sand.
-FL
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Just use Intel (Score:2, Informative)
My laptop purchase algorithm automatically filters out laptops without an Intel wifi adapter (and Intel graphics, but that's another story).
Intel has a solid track record [intellinuxwireless.org] on Linux driver development done right, going back years. They just Get It, while most others don't. My current Thinkpad with a 3945 has worked, with WPA, networkmanager et al with virtually zero problems as soon as Kubuntu was installed.
Atheros' recent AR6K family may become an option in the not distant future, as they finally remov
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Just to pick nits, if you're "filtering out," you're typically removing something as an option. But really, you meant the opposite of this (as was clear from the subject and the remainder of your comment). You probably should use "selects," as that is what you are doing -- choosing something, not rejecting it.
It can work (Score:2)
The cheesy copout solution (Score:2)
Re:Scientist's viewpoint (Score:4, Interesting)
Way worse than Winmodems. (Score:3, Informative)
You only ran into trouble with modems if you started getting internal, P
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The wireless bridge adapters aren't expensive by any stretch of the imagination. Newegg's cheapest listing at the moment is a very well-reviewed Buffalo unit, with a fancy MIMO radio and four Ethernet ports, for $52. $52! For only $52, you get to forget about Wifi problems for any device running any operating systems which can manage to ta
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I've been using Linux from the early days, mostly for scientific computing. For that it is great. But the problem is that linux has so many driver complications, and users tend to blame it on the companies that make the devices, and things never go anywhere as a result.
Well, the only driver problems I've ever had with Linux have been with ATI cards (which is ATI's fault) and the aforementioned wireless mess, and I still don't see how this isn't the fault of the companies. But, if I'm wrong, someone please enlighten me.
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The problem is, wireless cards these days typically require two things to be reverse engineered -- the firmware (which is often not supplied in ROM, but as a binary blob that gets loaded by the driver during device init), and the driver itself (the thing that communicates between the OS kernel and the device). There are many problems
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Funnily enough, I don't have any problems with WiFi, either. I use WPA-Enterprise and Fedora 7. Works great.
Used to work under Windows XP, too. Then it decided to stop working. Damned if I can get it going again.
Fucked if I can be bothered.
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I've been using Sabayon 3.4 on a Compaq Presario V6000 with Broadcom 4311 wlan.
It installed and worked fine out of the box, including the Broadcom wifi. If you're using Beryl, you'll need to set AIGXL to correct a display glitch, but that's a single menu setting in the Beryl manager
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Today the hardware is almost immaterial to a "hardware" product - it is the inner workings of the firmware, the driver and such that are where both the bulk of the engineering time and bulk of the "value" are. There are few, if any, secrets in silicon today.
So a manufacturer puts a lot of effort into developing a new product in the US or EU. If the functionality of the hardware/firmwar
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I understand your point about functionality being more implemented at the driver level instead of the actual hardware these days, but still, having the specs of the hardware (even if it doesn't do much besides being an interface for the physical world to the software that makes the hard work) could be usef
Re:The all OS solution (Score:4, Interesting)
the driver doesnt work with NDIS wrapper either...
of course...
that doesn't stop me using debian stable on my desktop!
It's not pretty, but I found a solution which even works with old Windows 95 (for testing) and enables full WBA encryption. It works on any OS that can use the wired NIC in a machine. Are you ready...
Use an access point which is capable of Client Mode operation. I use a D-Link AP in client mode. I configure it with my browser. It requires no software install of any kind. Testing was done on the D-link AP and now a Linksys 54G router has been added to my travel pack because it cost less (lucky find, a version 4 for $12 at Goodwill).
I have been running wireless with an AP in client mode since Breezy Badger. Upgrading the firmware to DD-WRT has added the client mode. As a bonus, you get to use high gain antennas with much better range than a stock laptop provides, and the power is adjustable for use in poor signal locations. The router does the site survey for you internally, so you don't even need to know the SSID ahead of time. It is as simple as switching to either client or client bridge mode, scanning, choosing an AP, and picking the encryption and entering the key. After that it's net, nothing but net.
There are hardware solutions out there. The package may be a little big and bulky and not run on self contained batteries, but it provides excellent connections in hotels in marginal reception areas. With the external box, it can be positioned in a window where the neighbors open AP may provide better bandwidth than the hotel provides. I went to a Starbucks once not knowing the wireless wasn't free (T-mobile). I was able to find 2 unsecured APs from inside Starbucks to use instead. Nobody at Starbucks was the wiser. It beats getting busted for sitting in a car leaching on some residential street.
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Some notebooks have BIOS locks. I tried replacing the Broadcom WiFi NIC in my HP with an Atheros NIC...it wouldn't even POST.
Fortunately, bcm43xx [berlios.de] has advanced enough that I can get a reliable connection at home or on the road with the travel router [amazon.com] I pack with my notebook, but it has some signal-strength problems that can make using public APs in unknown locations a bit dicey. (The travel router t
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And they're dirt cheap, too
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Personally, I got a 3-Com xjack card for that very reason. I plugged it in, my linux distro found it, and I'm on the internet. All of this was accomplished without the NDIS Wrapper.
Getting WPA to work has been a problem. The solution which I have found 100% compatible is to use an AP in Client Mode. It's a little bulky and requires a power outlet, but it provides WPA
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