Speed of wireless development in Linux

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I run Debian's development release, Sid, and as a consequence things change pretty rapidly on my system, in some areas. One of those areas is wireless networking.

A couple of months ago I set up wireless on my laptop using ndiswrapper for the builtin broadcom 4318 chip. At that time I had to use ndiswrapper and the Windows drivers as there were no native Linux drivers for that chipset. Well, I rebuilt my system due excessive screwing around with it and the desire to create new partitions on the hard drives so I could make the system boot to more OS's than just two.

When I reinstalled my system I've had a hard time getting wireless back up and running on a consistent basis and I couldn't figure out why. All my settings were a straight copy of what I had before, except that I specified a different driver, the new broadcom module built into the 2.6.17 kernel. I could get a connection on an inconsistent basis, but never a secure one with my home AP.

Well, I finally figured it out today. There has been so much development in the last two or three months that none of the ways of configuring wireless with wpa_supplicant and ifplugd worked any more.

It's now actually a lot easier to configure wireless in Debian, but without reading the latest documentation you would never get from my starting point to what they are now, and finding the latest documentation isn't very easy right now.

I have to say though, that now that I have things figured out that my wireless connections using one of my wireless adapters are consistently faster and more stable under Linux than under Windows. I have a Netgear WG111T USB wireless client that is matched to my Netgear router. The router and the client are capable of using the 802.11g protocol and communicating at 108 mb/s using an "auto" setting where the AP and the client both negotiate whether or not they can use the protocol. Under Linux I consistently get the 108 mb/s, but only under certain conditions under Windows. What is really interesting about this is that I have to use ndiswrapper and the ndis5 Windows drivers to get the card to use secure connections with Linux.

Running a development release of a distro really makes you learn. I like that, but most people would probably find it frustrating.

 

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I think you enjoy it because you have already taken the time to to overcome many of the hurdles that are thrown at you when you are trying to learn Linux. Presumably, like Windows, it gets to be more interesting and hence more fun when you can get it to sing and dance at your command.

I would liken Linux to snowboarding. I have been skiing numerous times, I really love the sensation of whizzing down a snow covered mountain on my trusty skis. I would also like to learn how to snowboard but that requires a different skill/technique, although the end result is the same i.e. you get to the bottom of a slippery slope. If I don a pair of skis, I know I will be at the bottom in no time at all and my backside will be unscathed but if I was to clamp a snowboard to my boots, I would have trouble just getting on or off the chair lift and at the end of the day, I would be black and blue

I suppose it depends. If you are a glutton for punishment and have masochistic tendencies, then clearly from what I have read and from my limited experience Linux is for you