Comments on: Linux users answer the call: Ubuntu wireless-adapter glitch resolved

The sage advice of Linux community members gets my Linksys wireless adapter working in Ubuntu 7.10 in just a few minutes.

[lefty.crupps]

"purchasing a $30 program (so much for freeware)"
Free Software is not freeware. Free Software can cost money, or not, but its source code is Free (libre) and can be shared and modified; freeware is not Free in the "open and share" sense, only in the cost sense (gratis).

Just a minor point, and congrats on your Wifi!

[punlman]

Personally, I've never had any WiFi problems with Ubuntu, but...

I saw that Wi-Fi radar on the Add/Remove Programs list, and I was thinking about installing it... just to see what it does.

Thanks for this heads-up!

[punlman]

PS - If you run into any snags this week, with Ubuntu, please feel free to email me. I've probably already encountered them and found a solution. bruce at brucewagner dot com

Also, I am currently writing an article for my blog called, "How to do a Perfect Ubuntu Install".

It's step-by-step instructions, written for the total newbie ("can barely operate a mouse") crowd. It will take them from sitting in front of a Windows machine, to backing up their Windows machine, to installing Ubuntu, to installing all of the proper codecs, flashplayer, DVD playback code, and all the best applications (that aren't already pre-installed), configuring them all quickly, briefly listing every "software equivalence" (i.e. for Quicken--->use GNUCash, for Photoshop-->use Gimp) , and finally teaching them how to do all the normal things they'll want to do on Ubuntu --- like "How to Install & Run Windows programs on Ubuntu", and "How to make very smart backups, easily and free", etc., etc.

I hope it will help masses of people with a more pleasant, trouble-free, migration to Ubuntu. After all, first impressions are so so important...

My blog is at brucewagner.com/blog

[twolf2919]

I hope your instructions include: how to setup a laptop with a desktop that spans two monitors - without resorting to edits of xorg.conf :( I just installed Ubuntu 7.10 a few days ago and made the mistake of trying to use the graphical "Screens and Graphics" tool to achieve my goal - it totally hosed my xorg.conf file every time (on a Dell Latitude D810 laptop).

I eventually got everything working (thanks to some kind soul who's xorg.conf modifications I just blindly copied) - sort of....whenever I'm at home (where I don't have the second monitor connected), firefox and thunderbird don't display to the screen at all (no, not even in the area of the big desktop that I can't show without the 2nd monitor - I would see them in the lower-right-hand corner representation of the desktop(s).

The other problem I encountered is wireless related: at work my laptop has a static IP address on a *wired* connection; it needs DNS to resolve machine names. At home, I use wireless and everything is DHCP configured. The problem I encountered is that Ubuntu rewrites the /etc/resolv.conf file every time you reboot. Whenever I boot up at home, the DNS servers from the work/wired connection get lost (replaced with whatever DHCP provides as the DNS server). Every morning when I get back to work I have to remember to re-enter those damn DNS servers.
I finally gave up and am no longer using DNS at work - I just put internal machines in my /etc/hosts file and use the proxy for all web/external lookups.

I'm a developer, but I don't know much about Unix/Linux config files and such - I was hoping that Ubuntu was finally a distro that one could just use and configure out-of-the-box....but it isn't - at least not for my needs.

In Ubuntu's defense, the initial setup on the laptop is a breeze, including wireless (a nice change from my previous experiences with wireless). But you'd figure that Linux would have a graphical way to handle configuration of multiple-monitor setups by now: it doesn't look like the GUI tool has changed much from when I tried it with my previous Linux install 2 years ago (Fedora 5 at the time). Back then, it screwed up my xorg.conf too.


The other

[clicketer]

Bruce, I was trying to check your blog and it seems that it is down. I am very interested in your step by step instructions as I was not able to get my wireless connection to work. Where I can download the wifiradar software? Thanks in advance

[ikorkyi]

There have been widespread problems with Broadcom wireless cards, especially with the bcm43xx drivers. The latest distros of Ubuntu solved a problem I have had for 3 generations with ubuntu and my Truemobile bcm4318. Blacklisting the default drivers Ubuntu chooses for these types of cards and then using ndiswrapper to attach the correct and up to date driver has been the technique that I have seen being the most successful.

PS Dont use any form of the word noob. ever. The joke peaked with south park and it is as cool as Groovy.

iwlist
ifconfig
iwconfig

these are 3 commands which will give you 98% of the information you need to know about what exactly is going wrong with your network interface.

[jelloburn]

And this is why I have installed and uninstalled Ubuntu twice and OpenSUSE once. They are all pains to configure, and they still have found no elegant way to install/uninstall programs or drivers. The Interface for the OS works great, but after that, everything is terminal this, command line that, and maybe a little 'sudo' to top it all off.

I don't have time to sit around and learn command line syntax or type lines of commands to install Flash Player or get my internal wi-fi to work (which I eventually accomplished over an entire weekend). Linux has a lot of growing up in terms of user-friendliness before it will be an acceptable replacement for the AVERAGE user. Not just the geeks that visit these articles (myself included).

[3rdalbum]

Jelloburn, maybe next time you should try compatible hardware? Or maybe you should remember the days of Windows 3.1 when users still chose to use the command-line even though the Macintosh was entirely GUI?

[hellsyes]

Is it really harder to type "sudo apt-get blah blah" than it is to get in your car, go to a store, buy a cd and install the software? Or even go to a website, download the program and install the software? Personally, its a lot easier for me to type a few simple commands.

I'm really not sure how you find it hard to install almost every program. either do the apt-get dance, or use synaptic or add/remove programs. It downloads and installs the stuff automatically. All you gotta do is pick it from a menu.

[yelvington]

Ubuntu has a very nice wifi applet built into the menubar and there is ordinarily no need to do anything from the command line. It Just Works.

Unfortunately, the 7.10 version introduced a bug. With some, but not all, wifi access hardware, the menubar applet Just Doesn't Work.

WiFi Radar works around this problem. Under the hood it actually invokes the command-line iwconfig program, which isn't broken in the upgrade.

I have four Ubuntu installations in the hands of nontechnical family members ranging in age from early teens to late 70s, and their end-user experiences are really, really positive.

However, I've blown a lot of personal time struggling with wifi hardware driver issues on two of those machines. One worked perfectly under 7.04 but broke, as described, under 7.10. On another, a built-in Atheros chip simply isn't supported under Linux, so I spent $4 on a (rebated) PCMCIA adaptor at CompUSA.

Overall, I'm not complaining. Relative to my Windows experiences, I'm well ahead on time/worry savings.

[hellsyes]

In my opinion, wifi-radar is 100x better. The whole idea of network-manager not being compatible with ifconfig scripts is a bad idea.

Also, your connection with wifi-radar is already up when you boot into the system. It automatically connects to any profiles you have set up and is initiated by the time you get to the login screen. No waiting for network-manager to connect once you're already booted.

If I want DHCP on one network and a static IP on another, I have that choice and its easy to setup. I never found a way to do that with network-manager. Not saying that there's no way to do it. Maybe I just didn't look hard enough.

[Scalpster]

Freeware is free. Open source on the other hand may be free or not.

[Scalpster]

Ignore that last statement. ;)

[sx66gns]

That's good to hear!

[brundlefly76]

Its not you being a n00b at all, theres no reason why you should have even needed to know that. I have used Linux for 13 years and although I love it for what it does, there are far more little obscure little hardware gotchas like this then the community likes to admit - especially wireless - which was treated like a red headed stepchild by Linux until very recently.

[October001]

Hah, you think Ubuntu is difficult! Today, just so I could get a feel for these things called "overlays" I installed Sabayon, a pretty sharp derivative of Gentoo. It was the first distro that recognized my wifi card "out of the box"... besides Ubuntu and family (Mint, Kubuntu, etc.) but an afternoon messing around with portage and building software from source had me pulling my hair out and dreaming about an easier, more sophisticated time called "apt-get" and "synaptic" ;)

[brundlefly76]

Its not you being a n00b at all, theres no reason why you should have even needed to know that. I have used Linux for 13 years and although I love it for what it does, there are far more little obscure little hardware gotchas like this then the community likes to admit - especially wireless - which was treated like a red headed stepchild by Linux until very recently.

[kmcniece]

WICD worked for me on my laptop picture frame project (www.burgerfaire.com)
I was using a static IP with the ubuntu supplied network-manager... worked great.
when I went to DHCP and WPA-TKIP.... frustration ensued....

After a little searching here and there, WICD was suggested. You can find it at http://wicd.sourceforge.net/

For the record, I was using an Intel mini-pci card.

To give an idea of how far Ubuntu and Linux have come with driver problems . . . on my old Mandrake installation, I spent hours trying to get my machine to recognize a NetGear USB wireless adapter before resorting to using a game port for wireless. To work, the game port had to be booted up on Windows, which recognized the device and adjusted settings that allowed the Mandrake distro to recognize it as well. Life is still not perfect. On my notebook, the internal wireless is Atheros, which is sometimes recognized and sometimes not. I carry a PCMCIA wireless card with me just in case.

After reading of your success with Wi-Fi radar, out of curiosity I installed it on my desktop and popped in that old NetGear adapter. It worked flawlessly! I didn't even need to reboot.

Once driver issues are resolved - and there really aren't that many of those any more - the other remaining frustration for noob users are wmv file codecs - though Flash and YouTube videos work fine. My 81-year-old mother has been using Ubuntu and before that Mandrake for several years with no problems - or at least no more than she would have had on Windows.

One of things you should notice as you play around with Ubuntu is its blazing speed. It is far faster than Windows and, for that matter, Mandrake.

[bryan047]

If only someone would address getting the PC5750 aircard to work with Ubuntu!