This is a comprehensive list of where Linux wireless support currently falls a bit short. This list of problems that should get fixed in Linux wireless grew out of Dan Williams’ attempt to put a GUI on top of Linux wireless with NetworkManager.
Where Linux 802.11x Support Needs Work
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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It would be so wonderful to be able to actually choose what I connect to on my card… It’d save me from the occasional changing of channels on my WAP to get it to be found before the one three buildings down the way!
I suppose I could buy a new card, but hey, I’m cheap!
Remember reading this a loong time ago, and yes it was mailed Tue Jan 25 2005. Not that it matters that much, the subject is what matters here
Indeed. Unfortunately most drivers are still not fixed as Dan requested.
…is doing the research and finding cards with supported chipsets. Acme wireless hard manufacturer changes chipset from V3 to V4 and it can be a real bitch to find out exactly what chipset it is using. B cards seem to be supported more than G cards. I finally got a real driver (not NDIS) for my rl8180. But it’s good that ndiswrapper is around.
…that currently prevents me from replacing Windows: support for my WIFI card. I can get things going with ndiswrapper but it’s clunky, unreliable and not ideal. I don’t blame Linux, though, I blame Broadcom
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.
Not NEARLY as much as ATI’s drivers do though.
Who would have believed that Intel Video, SIS, even Trident drivers would work better than ATI on Linux.
Thanks for nothing guys, I wasted over $1K on a laptop that *4* revisions of your *supported drivers* haven’t worked on.
Wifi is great compared to this.
install ndiswrapper and wpa_supplicant and all your woes go byebye,
No, you “wasted” over $1k on a laptop that was guaranteed to work with the OS it came with — probably XP.
What is “wastage” is you putting Linux on it, and expecting it to work with no problems . Seriously now, do your research, THEN buy the hardware. Don’t complain if you miss that crucial step.
Then again I have no doubt in my mind that all of you Linux users ride the short bus to school.
Your momma rides the short bus to school freak
I am teh hurt. Your wit is unmatchable.
Go compile a kernel.
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.
The truth is about 1 in 10 cards work under Linux/BSD. I have been through all kinds of cards. You really have no choice but to research what works prior to purchase. You have to be very detailed in you research due to some “funny business” by card manufacturers. The classic for me is the DLink DWL-650. I bought one of these cards because I read that it worked under Linux and BSD. It didn’t. I found that there are 4 versions of this card – all with entirely different chipsets. Only 1 chipset worked natively, 2 needed ndiswrapper (and standing on you head) and they _might_ work. 1 version was totally useless. I think it is criminal that manufacturers can change chipsets without changing the model number. Thats the way it is!
In one short sentence: Not working properly
In one short sentence: Not working properly
Does that make you happy?
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!!!”
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 works flawlessly in Windows as well. Microsoft doesn’t control the hardware manufacturers as much as you would want to think.
It’s the fact that Linux can’t be taken seriously by hardware manufacturers when every second kernel release, something is broken. Stabilize the f–king thing, and then you’ll get drivers rolling in.
———-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? 😛
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? 😛
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.
Have the community write drivers? Hahahahahah! What do you want everything to turn into? A Linux?
You’ve got to be kidding. No one knows the hardware better than the people who designed it.
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.
So blame the hardware manufacturer — shit. It’s not Microsoft’s fault that the hardware you chose came with poor drivers. The hardware I use works and works flawlessly. Windows does its best not to interfere, and I’m decently satisfied.
I find OS X’s interface to be even less intrusive, but Windows’ is by no means bad either.
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.
Who wants to get a mac on loan from apple?
If you think that computer is really yours, you’re nuts.
I fail to see how it isn’t mine. I can sell it, mod it, upgrade it, break it, wipe it clean and install Linux (God forbid), throw it around, pack it away and bury it …
Get on the clue train.
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
.
It might be cheap …
Only if your time has no value. Sorry, but I want my wireless to work flawlessly out of the box and right away. I get that with OS X. You people clearly do not get that with Linux. Score one for OS X.
The same applies to video, sound, applications … hell. It’s a joke.
Then again you have a point about BSD. BSD is total ownage, and I use it on 4/5 servers I build.
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.
If only I could use a binary driver released 1-2 years ago on the latest version of Ubuntu/SuSE/Gentoo/whatever, then maybe the hardware manufacturers would bother helping out.
As it stands, no one wants to put in the effort and money to develop a driver only for the kernel dev team to give them a big “f–k YOU” and break something again, requiring a modification or re-write.
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.
Haha … you’re one amusing fellow. So amusing, in fact, that you’re too afraid not to post as Anonymous.
My boss and most of my readers think I do a pretty good job with my articles — the opinion of one little Anonymous poster is about as important as a piece of trash like Linux.
As for the rest of your non-sensical rant … yeah, you say you use free solutions because you don’t want to “deal” with the companies. What do you call f–king around for hours to get a single piece of hardware/software working? Ease of use? Productivity?
Get a clue. Go compile a kernel. Or maybe your system. You know that Linux is a piece of shit — you’re just too afraid and proud to accept it.
PS: Nice to see you fell for my troll. Even my girlfriend laughed reading the crap I wrote in my parent post. 🙂 It’s so amazingly easy to push a Linux fanboy zealot’s buttons.
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.
Now I run network-manager with the nm-applet in my tray–it’s simpler and easier than under XP.
Screenie: http://static.flickr.com/27/54470842_93048e050c_o.jpg
I do understand that we need support for more cards–that would be fantastic, but $40 wasn’t a dealbreaker–a $200 printer/paperweight is.
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.
“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.
Once the orinoco drivers could do RFMON on the Apple Airport cards, they disabled this feature in some massive driver upgrade. They still havn’t got it working again.
How much you paid her? She was good to me, just presented my stamp card and got my free-be. You know how it goes, the tenth one is always free. 🙂
Compiled her kernel real good too.
Odd, I have my Intel wireless card working flawlessly in linux, and never had to use ndiswrapper. It’s fully supported, Ubuntu Breezy even detected it during installation. Sadly enough, I tend to think it works better/more stable under linux than it does under windows. The only issue I’ve ever had with it was connecting to the Wireless router at my old job, but then again that was because the router was just having issues, after rebooting that, wireless was working like a champ again.
what also really makes supporting wifi under Linux difficult is that most of these wirless cards are using firmware as opposed to a hardware/software combination. Government regulations (FCC in the U.S.) dictate which frequencies and how much power can be supported by wifi cards. In the case of firmware cards these regulatory mandates are not hardwired in hardware, as should be the case, but ‘coded’ in firmware. Many companies could not legally open up their firmwares even if they were inclined to do so-government regulations would prohibit them.
I went through 3 cards before I found one that works under Linux(Netgear WG511-* the original). I lkie my card so much I boughrt one for a friend of mine-only I failed to notice that this new one was marked version X-which had a totally different chipset-luckily it does run under ndsiwrapper…..
Given how little information is provided by the manufacturers, given how difficult reverse engineering in general is, given how spotty the coverage of reverse engineered drivers are likely to be due to the previous two, given how hard it is to write applications which take all of the deficiencies of the the given drivers into account-we should all be really thankfull that for some wireless card users using Networkmanger really *is* simple.
“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.
i just setup broadcom bcm 4306 using ndiswrapper, it works really good, ndiswrapper has come a LONG way, and most drivers works with it.
allthough, yes, if you want good support get one thats supported good in linux. i use ipw2200, and it works good.
wireless is probably the most lacking area in linux hardware support. everything else seems to be supported.
Is there some kind of anti-troll-feeding program going on here or why is it not possible to reply to LinuxIsPoo’s posts?
“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.