[sclug] Help! wireless with Ubuntu 8.04

[n.a.haughton@bigfoot.com]

Actually when I referred to Feisty I meant Gutsy (7.10) which was fine for
me. As a poor, naive boy I was lured by the bright lights of Hardy Heron and
its promise of pavements of gold, but I'm beating a hasty retreat!

Neil

2008/4/30 Neil Haughton <haughtonomous at googlemail.com>:

> 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
>