[sclug] Help! wireless with Ubuntu 8.04

[Neil Haughton]

Will Dickson wrote:
> n.a.haughton at bigfoot.com wrote:
>> Hmmm...
>>
>
>>
>> If that is the case, AFAICS I should be able to do the same with a
>> wireless router connected to a PC - the PC will be connected to a
>> wired port, and the wireless 'port' will be able to talk to the other
>> router/modem over the air. The unidirectional bit, from the green
>> side to the red side, will occur only on the router/modem downstairs.
>
> Hmmm! In other words, the upstairs router has a red that isn't
> connected to anything, is that right? 

Correct!

> OK, that ought to dispose of my previous objection.
>
> The next funky bit may be that both routers think they're the AP and
> get into a fight over who's in charge. However, at this point, I've
> come to the edge of my knowledge, so I don't know whether this will
> bite, and if so how hard it might be to fix. Good luck!

Can anyone else comment on this point? I'm beyond my knowledge here too.
>
>>
>> Private whinge: Networking was always a strong point with Linux (the
>> words "rock solid" spring to mind) so I must confess a certain
>> disappointment in Canonical's strategy with Ubuntu. Given the
>> ubiquity in wireless networking these days, esp. in the SOHO arena,
>> they seems to be putting far too much in the eye-candy department at
>> the expense of getting some of the basics right. After some 4 years
>> of releases I would have thought wireless would work 'out of the box'. 
>
> I think this comes down to the age-old problem that, in the face of
> luserly hardware venduhs who won't release the specs, there is only so
> much dev time available to reverse-engineer the 'orrible things. NICs
> of all kinds have always suffered from having a plethora of subtly
> different and / or broken chipsets to deal with: often two different
> instances of even the same model of card - or so the mfr claims - can
> have completely different chipsets, and hence need completely
> different drivers. My guess is that wireless networking now is in the
> same state wired networking was a few years ago. It will sort itself
> out in time, as the devs catch up and the market shakes out.
>
The point is that it was fine under Feisty, so it shouldn't be worse
under Hardy. My gut feel is that something is missing from the new
kernel, perhaps, but that could be way off beam. I don't know.

> That said, I'm also concerned that polish levels seem to be dropping
> as the distro becomes more sophisticated. Maybe it's just me, but I
> seem to encounter more minor glitches with every release. Sure, they
> get solved, but it's still annoying. I think I'll stick with Feisty
> for a bit longer.

I think you're wise, and I agree about the diminishing polish. In fact
Ubuntu is getting a bit like Mandrake was - right on the edge and
fragile. I think Canonical are losing the plot - the attractive thing
about open source for me was always that development wasn't driven by
commercial demands and deadlines - things were released when they were
ready to be released, and not before, and their state was carefully
documented (as far as that can be done, ie without the things that the
developers didn't know they didn't know) so you if you looked knew what
worked and what didn't. Canonical are clearly going for the business
market and seem to be subjecting Ubuntu dogmatically to this 6 month
release cycle, which may look good to businesses (although I don't
really see why that should be so important if the product suffers) and
releases go out on time, come what may. That having been said, I don't
see the wisdom in including a beta browser in 8.04, which however stable
it is sends a strange message to business users. No IT manager in his
right mind is going to deploy a distro containing betas - first glitch
and he will have some awkward explaining to do.
I think I'm going to revert to Feisty myself. Maybe in time Hardy'll get
sorted out, but  right now it seems to have been an upgrade too far.

Neil