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802.11 for Linux Non-Geeks?
smanuel asks: "I'm in the process of helping my
non-geek friend get his Linux box set up with a PCI wireless card.
2006 is fast approaching and Linux *still* has spotty support
for 802.11a/b/g PCI and PCMCIA cards. Ask the The
Oracle about wireless for Linux and the results aren't much
better. There are a ton of cards to choose from but support is either
spotty or requires such contortions that I'm wary of spending the
time. What PCI/PCMCIA cards do fellow Slashdot readers recommend? I'm
looking for both PCI and PCMCIA cards; preferably ones with native
support in Linux (I'm trying to avoid ndis{c,w}rapper if I can). Is
the fact that card manufacturers change chipsets more often than they
underpants make this a never ending problem?"
Its not that Linux doesn't support the cards, its that the card vendors don't support linux. If they were smart they'd supply linux drivers, or follow a standard that allows current drivers to work with their cards.
If you like what I've said here, and want to read more, go to http://www.krillrblog.com
This is the my biggest beef with linux support for wireless. I haven't found an 802.11g chipset that works reliably. I would purchase one this instant(I'm not kidding, I'll go straight to newegg or bestbuy) if I knew it worked, perfectly. All the cards have their quirks and the support is almost a joke. After twisting yourself into contortions it might work. That said the only card that I've had consistent success with has been the centrino chipset. Too bad these only come on intel laptops and not as a pci/pcmcia card.
I have a pheobe usb wireless that mostly works(atmel chipset). It only supports 802.11b(hardware limitation) and it can't do a scan for networks while connected to one, this really fucks up wifi-radar.
I had an orinico pcmcia card by smc. Very nice card, unfortunately it had a very flimsy plastic antena that broke when my cat stepped on it. Scanning did not work at all, so if I wanted to connect to a network, I had to guess the essid.
I also had a linksys pcmcia card. I forgot the name but it was one of those where earlier versions worked fine but the newest version had a different chipset even though the model name remained the same. This was a piece of shit card under any os. Though it mostly didn't work under linux.
It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
The RTL8180 is a pretty infamous card that now has native support after years of Realtek jerking us around with drivers that worked on 2.4.24 kernel or below. Of course the old orinico and prism chipsets work well, but 802.11g native support seems to be lacking a lot more than b. There's a chipset called RALINK or something or another that is open sourced.
The big problem is that the card makers will change chipsets at the drop of a hat and it can be next to impossible to find out what chipset its actually using - even if you know the revision and everything. I remember one card where there was the same version, but some were made in taiwan and some were made in china and only the chinese cards had the proper chipset.
It's a real mess. I probably spent 3 hours one night doing research and had my choices narrowed down when I happened to pop in a kanotix live cd and lo and behold it picked up my card without ndiswrapper or anything. So I'm happy for now, even though its just a 802.11b card. And then of course you've got the whole frequency regulation crap where manufacturers can't even open source if they want to.
Since when was 'underpants' a verb?
Max.
I've been using an orinoco-based Enterasys Roamabout DS for quite a while now, and am pretty satisfied with it. No issues getting it working, and Kismet works well with it. I just plug it in and go.
"Better to be vulgar than non-existent" -Bev Henson
Clearly you asked the wrong Oracle.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
But in hindsight I should have used OpenBSD, just forgot to get the bloody CD's out.
The best Hardware Compatability List for Linux that I've seen is here:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/hcl/index.php
It could be better (it HAS to get better) but I did get some useful modem purchasing info from it.
You are wise to inquire about Linux compatability before buying components for your 'industry standard x86 platform'.
If you are being serious, CoLinux is a far better answer for running linux under windows than vmware. It runs at near-native speed, using essentially a port of UserMode Linux to Win32 (it runs as an NT service)
D-Link DWL-G630 (ver.D1) + Ubuntu work fine out of box. But WPA support is tricky. You have to install wpa_supplicant and configure it.
I'm using Ubuntu Breezy with an Intel 802.11g card, and it works just fine - it worked out of the box with no tuning on my part. AFAIK most old 802.11b cards Just Work - the problem comes when you go to 802.11g; there you want to avoid Broadcomm, since drivers for Broadcomm chipsets on Linux are spotty. I don't know why the Intel is better, but for whatever reason, it is (I'm sure there is a reason - I just don't follow those drivers very closely).
You may run into trouble when you are in a situation where there's more than one network. NetworkManager should take care of that, but it's bleeding edge right now. You can select networks from the command line, and there are widgets for selecting the network in Kde and Gtk which do seem to work, but the UI isn't very easy to use yet. NM should be easier; stay tuned.
The Atheros based cards are great. D-Link sells a DWL-G650 PCMCIA card and a DWL-G520 PCI card, both using Atheros chipsets, for around $45 ($30-35 on sale usually). The Madwifi project supports these at http://madwifi.sf.net/, and the driver supports the use of wpa_supplicant for WPA.
I use these cards myself and have recommended them to many people, and almost all of them are happy with the results. (The one that isn't apparently got a bad card and is too lazy to exchange it.)
The other thing that helps here is the fact that D-Link doesn't change chipsets in the middle of a product line like other crappy brands (at least, not in _this_ line).
If you're biased against D-Link for some reason, Atheros also has a great list of manufacturers/products that use their chipsets - this is something every chipset manufacturer should have on their page.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
My biggest problem was to know in advance what I'd buy. Most cards don't come with chipset specifications, and - like with webcams - vendors like to change chipsets between different versions.
So, I bought a Linksys Wireless-G USB, thinking it is a Prism2 chipset which is well supported and has RFMON. It turned out, version 4 has a Ralink chipset which seems not to work flawlessy with ndiswrapper.
Fortunately, these great guys at rt2x00.serialmonkey.com have native driver that supports RFMON and native linux wireless extensions (unlike linux-wlan-ng that is... mmhmm... different). So far the drivers are quite stable and I'm hoping they will improve the remaining glitches (like setting a new MAC address).
Don't buy a card with a broadcom chipset.
I'm amazed you haven't come across the linux wlan chipset list. Although it hasn't been updated for nearly two years it's about the most exhaustive list of what is in each card that I've seen. If 802.11b is fine then there are still Prism 2.5/3 based cards out there that work very well. I also recently tested a Atheros based PCMCIA card (I'm purposely not naming manufacturers) which also worked well but required a small binary lump.
As mentioned elsewhere, support for wifi isn't spotty - it's support for certain chipsets that is (alas this is also extends to various USB wifi devices too). If you buy (for example) a Broadcom based card I'm afraid you're in for a rough ride because Broadcom don't want to release open source drivers. There's no point getting upset - Broadcom are within their rights to do so and Linux isn't binary only friendly. It's the way things are.
The best advice I can give is get a peek inside the box so you know which chipset you are buying. Manufacturers are lazy and try to avoid changing model numbers significantly even if they swap chipsets because it means all the other materials can stay exactly the same. If you are going on someone else's information be extremly weary of ANY deviation to the model name/number/revison. Things like a +, extra letters or revision increase of any amount can mean chipset changes.
As an OpenBSD user I can tell you that it does not have the broadest support. Let me back this counterclaim up.
OpenBSD supports the following chipsets (as taken from the OpenBSD i386 hardware compatibility page on 19th November 2005:
ADMtek, Aironet, Atheros, Atmel, Centrino (2100, 2200), Prism 2.5/3, Ralink (2500), Raytheon and Realtek
Now by comparison a Linux distro (e.g. Ubuntu) can have support for the following chipsets (list taken from Linux WLAN Howto cross referenced against Ubuntu) on 19th November 2005:
ADMtek, Aironet, Atheros, Atmel, Centrino (2100, 2200), Prism 2.5/3, Ralink (2400, 2500), Prism GT, Raytheon, Texas Instruments ACX100/110, Wavelan
A pretty similar list wouldn't you say (OpenBSD has Realtek which Ubuntu doesn't, Ubuntu has Ralink 2400, Prism GT, ACX100/110 and Wavelan which OpenBSD doesn't)? In fact, Linux has Realtek drivers too but as they aren't shipped in Ubuntu I left them off the list. Linux also has ndiswrapper and Linuxant Driverloader allowing the use of Win32 drivers but I'm discounting non native drivers.
Chipsets that aren't supported by either OS that are significant:
Broadcom - There's a heck of a lot of Broadcom stuff out there and no sign of open drivers ever. That's their perogative but this stuff is all over the place...
Marvel - a new 802.11g player as far as I can tell. No open source drivers that I know of so far.
For the meantime, chipsets like Broadcom mean that open source OSes will always have a more troublesome than Windows with random wireless drivers. Choose carefully and don't reward vendors with non free drivers where possible.
If you check the beginning ofthe 2.6.14 changelog you will find mention of a "ieee80211 subsystem" being merged. So hopefully all drivers will be ported to the generic in kernel 802.11 stack. This will hopefully take over WPA crypto duties from drivers. This also goes hand in hand with version 28 of Wireless Tools which will provide a basic (but standard) interface for WPA.
Yes the *BSDs are further down this track as pointed out in another comment buy it's nice to see Linux catching up and I believe HostAP and the Centrino drivers have already been converted over to using the generic 802.11 stack.