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Indeed. Unfortunately most drivers are still not fixed as Dan requested.

And at the same time, Broadcam doesn't give a damn. Why should they, you already bought their hardware.

Truth is, you probably don't want to run Linux badly enough. Even if Broadcom ported the driver, would you REALLY make the switch, or would there just be something else holding you back?

"And at the same time, Broadcam doesn't give a damn. Why should they, you already bought their hardware."

You seem to be making the assumption that this is the last WIFI hardware I will ever buy.

"Truth is, you probably don't want to run Linux badly enough. Even if Broadcom ported the driver, would you REALLY make the switch, or would there just be something else holding you back?"

I want to run it badly WITHOUT changing my hardware at this point in time. I'm not making silicon sacrifices to appease the Linux gods. If it worked with my hardware, yes indeed I would make the switch.

That other guy who flamed you.........

Anyways.... What video card are you currently using?

If it wasn't for DRI drivers I'd have gotten a new nVidia card years ago.(though I don't have a laptop)

You do know that there are experimental r300 drivers for DRI in the works, right?

It's an xpress 200, ATI claims to support it and it kinda sorta works if you hack your system enough and break 9/10ths of everything else on it.

They need to spend some real R&D on it.

To the loser that flamed me, I bought it because ATI said it was supported. How in the hell is that MY fault?

I'd start looking for a distro which has the RC of xorg 6.9/7.0. Or just build it and test it independently. DRI actually makes some pretty decent drivers.

In one short sentence: Not working properly

Does that make you happy?

and the simple reason for that is that apple goes anal about having control over the hardware so that the system performs flawlessly.

about the only os that have majority hardware support out there is windows...

the rest is either fighting a uphill battle or live on hardware that are tightly controled by the maker of the os.

----------It's the fact that Linux can't be taken seriously by hardware manufacturers---------

No it's not. It's the fact that there isn't a percieved large enough market for linux.

By most estimates, Linux has replaced the Mac as #2 OS. but those are only estimates.

By most estimates, Linux has replaced the Mac as #2 OS. but those are only estimates.

I've seen that also. Thing is that the figures, or estimates, have to be maximums for a Mac (as it could be running Linux instead) and minimums for Linux (as machines initially shipping with Windows and OSX are being converted to Linux). Mac is third best these days, and dropping. Good riddance.

And can we have a big 'Amen' for "Stephen BeDoper", who said:
Note to Linksys: there is no good reason, ever, to make a desktop application that looks and behaves like a webpage

IMO, the worst offender in this category is Symantec with their memory hogging, only half effective anti virus product. True interface crap.

--
Just-Think-It.com

-----------Thing is that the figures, or estimates, have to be maximums for a Mac and minimums for Linux -------------

Yup. I've never seen any of these comparison articles take into account for mac users who have converted their machines to linux.

Torvalds uses a mac, and it's linux only. It's insanity to think he's the only one.

----------Mac is third best these days, and dropping. Good riddance.---------------

I disagree. As much as I can't stand the mac and the proprietary BS I still recognize their place in the market. Besides, linux users need someone to kick around right? :-P

Mac is third best these days, and dropping. Good riddance.

I disagree. As much as I can't stand the mac and the proprietary BS I still recognize their place in the market. Besides, linux users need someone to kick around right? :-P

For some reason it has always been personal between me and the Mac makers. Er, gougers.

It is true that competition is good for the market -- I guess that is why MS bailed out Apple some years back.

Ok, may the Mac continue to see a declining marketshare until they are the equivalent of a 90-year-old running in the Olympic 100 meter hurdles.

"For some reason it has always been personal between me and the Mac makers. Er, gougers."

For some reason? Are you kidding me? It's because you are always trolling. Why don't you just button it up and Just Think It so you can spare us your nonsense.

i have seen drivers in windows lead to instability and messed up systems before, and im sure im going to see it again.

a better solution would be for the hardware companys to release full hardware specs so that the comunity could write and maintain the drivers. its the hardware sales that brings in the cash anyways, not the drivers.

problem is that they are often buildt of third party parts and refrence designs. just look at all the nvidia based grahics cards that all work flawlessly with the drivers nvidia supplys. and those third partys may not like having their trade secrets spread for all to see.

allso, those hardware companys would have to inform the world whenever they changed a chip in their product in while maintaining the same product code. but this have allready been pointed out in a diffrent comment.

a better solution would be for the hardware companys to release full hardware specs so that the comunity could write and maintain the drivers. its the hardware sales that brings in the cash anyways, not the drivers.

problem is that they are often buildt of third party parts and refrence designs. just look at all the nvidia based grahics cards that all work flawlessly with the drivers nvidia supplys. and those third partys may not like having their trade secrets spread for all to see.

I think that there are NDA/patent issues aplenty with all hardware categories.
Sill, I use my nVidia chips with nvidia-kernel under Gentoo, and it's splendid. Just have to build a new linux kernel, and then emerge nvidia-kernel again before startx.
Would I switch to hardware that is completely transparent about its specificiations, and open about its drivers? Absolutely. How long do I think it will take the market to evolve that far? Couple of decades.

It works flawlessly in Windows as well.

Bullshit. There's the lovely way that XP on some systems will continue to complain when you're connecting to an unsecured network, even if you check "don't show this message again." There's the fact that many manufacturers of wireless cards include their own wireless connection management software for some reason, instead of just using the tool built into XP. And while the wireless tool built into XP isn't spectacular, all the third-party ones I've used are absolute crap (yes, I know you can set Windows to manage the connection, but many people don't know that). Note to Linksys: there is no good reason, ever, to make a desktop application that looks and behaves like a webpage.

And then there's all the random, mostly unexplained quirks I've run into when setting up wireless for people. Like an XP machine with a Linksys wireless card that wouldn't even detect a Linksys router until I changed the wireless channel to 11 on the router. Or an InexQ wireless card that saw the nearby InexQ router, but saw it as channel 7 (actually on channel 6), and didn't work until I manually changed the router to channel 7.

And that's just dealing with WinXP. Things get even more fun when pre-XP OSes are thrown into the mix.

In the past year or so, I've setup about half a dozen small wireless networks, with NIC/AP hardware from various manufacturers and all using Windows, and its far from flawless.

There's that other "friendly" treatment in Windows XP, which on WEP-enabled networks asks you to type in the WEP key. You know, that random string of hex digits. So you get to type it *blind* (it "*"s out the characters). And then, unbelievably, gets you to do it again.

It's not as if the developers really think it's a secret password that someone might shoulder-surf - the wizard then asks if you want to export the whole setup into a text file to copy to other computers.

"There's that other "friendly" treatment in Windows XP, which on WEP-enabled networks asks you to type in the WEP key. You know, that random string of hex digits. So you get to type it *blind* (it "*"s out the characters). And then, unbelievably, gets you to do it again."

Are you trying to say that the Linux version is more friendly? It's HIDEOUS!! Under Ubuntu, in the network config settings, you also type it blind AND it just sits there and gives you NO indication on whether you connected properly. Yes, there is a commandline equivalent but it's also goofy and not worth talking because the average Joe can't and shouldn't have to use it.

"Bullshit. There's the lovely way that XP on some systems will continue to complain when you're connecting to an unsecured network, even if you check "don't show this message again." There's the fact that many manufacturers of wireless cards include their own wireless connection management software for some reason, instead of just using the tool built into XP. And while the wireless tool built into XP isn't spectacular, all the third-party ones I've used are absolute crap (yes, I know you can set Windows to manage the connection, but many people don't know that). Note to Linksys: there is no good reason, ever, to make a desktop application that looks and behaves like a webpage."

Bullshit. I've never had that problem once and I use WEP daily on XP both at home and in the office. I'll put your problem down to ignorance and a dash of inexperience.

"that the system performs flawlessly" - not entirely true. My Powerbook G4 with built-in Broadcom wireless chip does work pretty well for connecting to pre-defined networks. Though has a habit of dropping the connection if the signal gets weak and not re-connecting unless you hibernate/restore.

However, that's all you get. If you want to be able to scan for rogue networks (yes, it's my job) there's the Kismac port of Kismet. Very nice, except that packet capture just does not work on the built-in Broadcom card, you need a separate device.

And of course Ubuntu or other Linux systems can't use the card at all. Which certainly influences my advice on hardware purchases.

That's what I call trolling. I'm going to feed it a little bit. There are many reasons to use Linux or an open source BSD flavour on your computer. In my case it's simple: it's cheap and works the way I want. And I don't go to my friends and say "Hey, look! I'm using Linux here!". They don't mind. The only thing they want is to be able to comunicate with me, send me pictures, videos, chat with me, browse the web; and you can do all of that with Linux, for example. Why should I move to a more expensive platform, hardware and software wise? Because the wireless card doesn't work? Sorry, there are many things besides wireless networking.

However, wireless cards are not working as they should, in geneneral, and everybody is in their rights to say so, discuss about it to eventually improve it. It will be good in the long run for me, for my friends who have Windows and a wireless network at home, and for the ones that have a Mac too. I will be able to play with them in (wireless) LAN parties, share things... If it drives you nuts to see people discuss about improving wireless networking on a given OS, you're mad .

ummm...wow, OS X fully supports the builtin wireless card that apple created.

I think it's quite amazing that Linux has support for most hardware seeing as they don't seem to be getting much help from the hardware manufacturers.

Better support is always good.

I look at this garbage that you people have to deal with on a daily basis, and I laugh. If you look at that LKML post, it's clear that the Linux devs responsible for 802.11 compliance had absolutely no direction/idea of where they were going.

You are the only ones who are placing this burden upon yourselves. Switch away from the garbage and use something better.

When I wake up my iBook it automatically connects to 1 of 4 pre-designated networks: home, work, school, and girlfriend's house. None of this shit-dealing that you idiots have to go through only to proclaim "I AM A L337 HAX0R BECUZ I USE TEH LUNIX1!!!"

Oh gee, another "Linux Is Poo" post!

I look at people like you posting BS and I laugh.

A weener who spent money on an Apple, who couldn't
even secure a BSD box if his life depended on it. A
try-hard troll with nothing better to do, except write
lame-ass articles no one reads on Neoseeker. (Where
even the Neoseeker folks will say your opinions don't
represent Neoseeker's...Way to get support there troll-boy!)

What shall he whinge about today?
Wow! Look all that crap you pulled out of your arse!
Its spectacular!

Really? We all want to buy Apple, don't we?
It must be the stylish external casing! Well, small things amuse small minds, don't they?

The reason we use free solutions because we
don't have to deal with companies like Apple and MS in
the first place.

Apple and MS have all nice and polished products which every person with a brain capacity of a spider monkey can use, etc, etc. (The "spider monkey" comment is a line from Bill Gates).

Well, the Evil Empire had Star Destroyers, a Super Star Destroyer and a pair of DeathStars.

They got their asses whopped by a bunch of
uncoordinated Rebels that (in your words), have
"absolutely no direction/idea of where they were
going". And what did the Rebels have? Converted
transport ships...And who won in the end?



The sad thing about this is, people are knocking at software, functionality and such when its not mature yet, when the developers are facing obstacles like companies not bothering with support for other OSs that aren't commercial.

"Linux Is Poo" is one such retard...Wait, I shouldn't
have used retard, as I feel they're far more superior
than "Linux Is Poo". He should be classified as that
dried crusty stuff that ends up on the edge of your
lips on a hot summer day...

You just wipe away without thinking.

Cards with the Atheros chipset work out of the box. If you're in the US, grab a Netgear 311T or 511T, usually on sale for $40 or less. I plugged mine in, started the box, and it was autoconfigured. Had to plug a WEP key in, but that was it.

Yeah, Athereos or Prism or orinico or some DLink cards, etc.. the problem is finding them. I guess if you're adventurous you can try Ebay, but I'd rather go to the local BestBuy, take it out of the box in the parking lot, put in my laptop and test it out.

"Prism is the only company with enough sense to release API's. The rest gave into Bill Gates' bullying and threats and therefore their products had to be reverse engineered.

I don't want Bill Gates telling me which hardware I can use or not use."

Don't forget Ralink. Their WLAN:n drivers are completely GPL and no need for binary firmware crap.

"In the case of firmware cards these regulatory mandates are not hardwired in hardware, as should be the case, but 'coded' in firmware."

As if that's effective law. The legislators should wake up. It's easy to get boosters if you want more power, or just lie as to which country you are in and use those extra channels and power.

I don't have much issue with laws that say you must supply conforming equipment - that's exactly what the Linux and open source "vendors" do, their hardware and software as written complies with the law. Users may be able to modify it, but most won't have the inclination or skill to do so, especially if the law is written to make *operation* of non-conforming equipment illegal.

Laws that attempt "security by obscurity" are as lkely to succeed as technology with the same approach.

----------Many companies could not legally open up their firmwares even if they were inclined to do so-government regulations would prohibit them.------------

Figures. The government is always screwing america.

"Is there some kind of anti-troll-feeding program going on here or why is it not possible to reply to LinuxIsPoo's posts?"

That would be great if someone could convert it to work against all the WindowsIsPoo and MacIsPoo posts as well.