[SWLUG] WiFi & Linux

[Jonathan Wright]

Phillip Evans wrote:
> Maybe a wired connection rather than wifi may be easier, problem is the 
> spatial arrangements at my place are such that wifi is the easier option 
> and I may get a laptop...

Generally, I always prefer a wired connection to a wireless because of 
the higher speed, ability to switch rather than share and (at least in 
Linux), much easier to work with.

But, I've worked with madwifi and ndiswrapper a little through Linux 
(about a year or so ago) and managed to get a reasonable working 
connection via wpa_supplicant, although at the time is did require a 
number of custom changes to various scripts and settings on boot-up to 
allow the connection.

You're not going to get the 'Zero-Configuration' wizard of Windows in 
Linux - anything to do with wireless on more than unencrypted or basic 
wep is going to take a lot more work, while multiple locations will 
likely bring up their own set of problems, long with 
suspension/hibernation, etc.

But, like the rest of Linux, once it's going it tends to set their and 
do the job it was written to do, without too much interference.

> I am not sure what to make of ndiswrapper, comments I have heard/read 
> are mainly extremes, easy & no problem or nasty, avoid like a a dose of 
> the clap ! With Mandriva, any attempt to use drakconf to set up a 
> wireless connection will install ndiswrapper if not already installed so 
> I would imagine it is fairly routine with this distro. I suppose you 
> pays your money & takes your choice.

Generally, I think ndiswrapper can only fall into the two extremes. In 
my case, it worked great with one adapter, but the use of another (with 
it's driver) always panicked the kernel and crashed the system.

At the end of the day, you're using Win32 drivers through an API to a 
linux-based system and the two will never properly match, especially as 
many adapters and drivers often have custom programs and APIs for their 
own means.

If you can get one with a (near) open source driver (they'll never be 
fully open-sourced as most adapters use radio modules which are not 
hardware restricted to set frequencies - this is against federal law in 
the US and so they get around it by using closed-source drivers which 
set the boundaries at run-time), you'll stand a better chance.

> Instinct tells me that a pci adaptor card is probably less bother than a 
> usb adaptor - is this fair comment ?

Again, totally depends on the driver, but from my experience, PCI/PCMICA 
cards are the better supported.

-- 
  Jonathan Wright                           jonathan at netwrker.co.uk
                                              http://netwrker.co.uk

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