Chris Johnston

I installed SUSE 9.1 Personal onto my computer yesterday and was able to get everything installed and running, including my Linksys wireless. I was able to connect to the internet and download a bunch of updates for various programs. I thought everything was running fine.

I turn the notebook on this evening, boot into SUSE and try to access the internet. Nothing. In fact, the wireless card failed to even connect to my access point. The little green light simply sat there blinking at me. And here I was having nice fuzzy thoughts about SUSE.

Okay, no problem, simply go into YAST2 and adjust the wireless settings. Maybe the computer had forgotten something in the last 24 hours. Maybe I had changed a setting without realising it. Maybe the little wireless gremlin had struck again.

So I took a look at all my wireless network settings and everything looked fine. I made a few adjustments and restarted networking and nothing. I tried rebooting the computer (works on windows), finally the card was able to connect to my wireless network. However, I was still unable to access the internet.

Anyway, after about a half hour of fiddling I am now typing this in Windows XP where I can access my wireless network and the internet without any troubles at all.

So far, I have had a perfect score when it comes to Linux distributions, wireless networks, and my notebook. Not a single distro has been able to work properly when it comes to wireless networking. Some fail outright like Mandrake 10, some work for a little bit and then fail like SUSE 9.1 Personal, while others will work, but only on a single network like Mandrake 9.2. With Mandrake 9.2, it will detect the wireless card perfectly when I do the install and allow me to set it up to connect to my home network as well without any difficulties. So far, this is the distro that has come the closest to working perfectly. As such, I had high hopes for Mandrake 10 (it has scored the worse so far).

What I don’t understand is why is wireless so difficult for Linux to do? Ah, you are going to respond that it is a driver problem. Nonsense, the card is detected and works perfectly in Mandrake 9.2 — it can’t be a driver problem. My biggest pet peeve with Linux, and the reason that I do not deem it ready for the “desktop”, is that it just does not work. Linux still requires people to fiddle and adjust, tweak and configure in order to get all the functionality working.

SUSE is a great Linux distribution, probably the best that I have every used, but without consistant, reliable wireless access across multiple networks, it will not retain a spot on my notebook. I know that with Windows XP I can find any open hotspot and within a few seconds be connected and surfing the internet. With Linux, I may never be able to connect to my own home network over which I have total control. How am I ever suppose to connect to an open hot spot? During the school year I need to connect to my home network and to the school network. So far with Linux I have to choose one or the other. With Windows XP all I have to do is turn on the computer.

Now, you are going to tell me that if I edit this config file and install that package and then change some setting in some boot script I can get the functionality that I want. This is probably true, however, the problem is that the people that the Linux community wants and needs to adopt Linux simply want to turn their computer on and have it connect to the internet. They do not want, nor will they, edit config files in order to gain functionality that should be taken for granted they way that it can be with Windows and OS X.

Once again I ask the simple question: why is wireless networking so hard to do under Linux? Why is this something that requires time and effort to get working? Why can I not simply turn on my computer, have it find any and all available networks and ask me for the required details in order to access one of those networks? I don’t want to configure in order to surf, I simply want to surf.

Linux will never be adopted into the mainstream if it can’t figure out this simple bit of functionality.

“The attitude of openness by Jono Bacon — The attitudes to free/commercial software, our competitors and users is something that is important from an insider perspective as well as from the outside…”

This is an interesting article that lists some of the problems with the current attitude amongst some members of the Linux community. If you want to be involved in advancing the cause of Open Source software and Linux in particular than you must read this article and adjsut your attitude accordingly.