Wireless

Wireless in Linux is one of my pet hates. On my laptop (which doesn't have built in wireless) I have a choice of two external wireless connections - one a PCMCIA card, the other a USB wireless dongle. Both are pretty poor when it comes to remaining connected. Likewise, my EeePC 701 with Ubuntu installed is much less reliable when it comes to the wireless (Atheros) than the bog-standard Xandros cutesey interface.

I am currently trying to discover exactly why the wireless support in Ubuntu is so poor when it comes to my specific devices and I think I am slowly making inroads. Nothing certain as yet, but I have a few little ideas which seem to have improved my issues with the main laptop - fingers crossed!

Tonight, I am using a different laptop - this is a Lenovo machine and the wireless seems to be working fine with the live Ubuntu 10.04 disk. Which seems to suggest it is certain modules rather than a generic "wireless" issue....

But the problem of poor wireless connectivity is a very common problem on Launchpad - so the problem affects a lot of Linux users. It is a shame, because wireless is a very popular method of network connecting, yet Linux still struggles when it comes to many of the popular chipsets.