Wireless: the new barrier for desktop Linux

[fouldragon at aol.com]

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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