Wireless: the new barrier for desktop Linux

[Steven Wagner]

fouldragon at aol.com wrote:
> Years ago, I assumed that Linux would falter on the desktop as long as 
> there was no AOL client.
>
> Fortunately, AOL has withered against cheap, omnipresent broadband, but 
> it seems like we're back at square one on getting to usable systems for 
> customers.
>
> Now, linux is going to falter as long as wireless is still a mess.
>
> I have what would seem like fairly simple setup-- one router, two PCs, 
> one Laserjet 5 with a network card-- all on static IP addresses, and 
> WPA.  I use a rt61-compatible 802.11 card, supposedly very 
> Linux-friendly.
>
> So I decided to try Wolvix, as it supposedly included wifi-radar to 
> make things easy.
>
> Once it boots (and X fails because it doesn't support my 
> now-a-full-generation-old 7600GS), I find that it's not loading the 
> firmware files for the 802.11 card.  They moved where you put those 
> when nobody was looking.
>
> So I move them manually.  The card appears as wlan0.  But wifi-radar 
> expects it to be eth1, and scans aimlessly until I find THAT config 
> file and edit it.
>
> Smooth sailing from now on?  Nope.  I set everything up, but 
> wpa-supplicant seems to throw up, beefing about nonsupported calls, so 
> I'm still not actually getting on the network.
>
> In the time I spent fighting, I could probably have drilled a hole 
> through my floor, fed some Cat 5 through down to the router, and had a 
> supported wired network.
>
> And the sad thing is that it's a worse situation now-- in the old days, 
> only the most obscure drivers (i. e. my old LMSI CM-205 1X CD reader) 
> were seperate packages.  Now, many more are-- both "fun to haves" like 
> hardware sensors, and "big deals" like accelerated X11.  You had, at 
> least, a well-supported system without getting it on a network.
>
> I hate to imagine how much worse this would be if 1) my card was one 
> with poor or no support (i. e. where ndiswrapper didn't work well) or 
> 2) I was the typical laptop wireless user, who might need different 
> profiles for different environments.
>
> I got wireless working once, in 2003, on my little PII-266 Thinkpad, 
> but that was in the days of open 802.11b networks and only a handful of 
> chipsets.
> :wq
>
> (I spend so long sshd into a server doing minor text edits with vi, 
> that I've started doing <esc> :wq in the middle of GUI text editors :) )
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>   
WICD is good. That helped me overcome some nightmares with my cursed
Broadcom 4318. Feh, I hate Broadcom. But at least it works now. I