[plug] wireless networking

[Brad Campbell]

William Kenworthy wrote:
> Need info: which distro, what wireless card (chipset)
> 
> There seems to be a million ways to wireless under linux - and most of
> them dont work!  Its easiest if you have one of the more sophisticated
> distros as the jinks and hurdles have generally been worked out for you,
> and if you are lucky it will just work.

I'm seriously wrapped with network-manager and nm-applet in gnome on the latest ubuntu.. I've not 
been _anywhere_ yet on any access points with any type of encryption I could not connect to the 1st 
time, and then it just auto-reconnects when I next drop in..

I work out of about 8 different offices, 4 hotels and 3 airports at the moment and now I've visited 
each one at least once, I just open the lid, resume the machine and in 10 seconds I'm connected.
It's far, far more reliable than the same thing under "Windows ZeroConfig Wireless".

Having said that, I agree about the "million ways to wireless .. and most of them dont work".
Out of the box Ubuntu could/would not connect to a WPA access point and it's roaming was seriously 
impaired even on WEP systems.. once I figured out I needed to install network-manager though it's 
been smooth sailing.

On my hacked up debian system I've used for the last .. (oh lots) of years.. I used hacky bash 
scripts, loads of crap associated with ifup/down scripts and other duct tape and chewing gum and 
barely managed to keep it reliable.

While I'm here, Bill I've got a hacked copy of sony_acpi that powers up/down the cd drive (not that 
it's a useful feature as the rest of the kernel spits it when it sees the drive powered down) and a 
hacked sonypid with some bash helpers to assign vol+/-1 to fn-F8/fn-F9, assigns fn-F11 to toggle the 
bluetooth device and makes the media eject key actually eject the disk. If you want them I'll upload 
the source to my web server.


Brad
(had a quick play with kubuntu this morning and I'm downloading xubuntu now to have a play. Kubuntu 
out of the box would not even run with my USB wifi dongle, let alone attempt to configure the essid 
and wep key.. strike one. I'll try it on my other machine with the ipw2200 tonight..)


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