Linux WiFi drivers are better they said, try them again they said.
Martin_H
Posts: 4,051
I decided to try Linux again using the latest Linux Mint distribution. I have an internal PCI express and two WiFi dongles. None of them work. The internal PCIe card is not seen by the OS, while both WiFi dongles are. However, while my home network is visible to the machine, I can't connect to it. No errors other than you are disconnected the instant you try to connect.
Everything else seems to work, but WiFi still seems to be thorny on Linux.
Everything else seems to work, but WiFi still seems to be thorny on Linux.
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Admittedly I have never used a PCie WIFI adapter so I have no idea what goes on there.
Sadly I'm stuck in an airport with a Surface Pro so I'm not able to offer any help.
I used to use wicd, and it was often nearly impossible to get it to connect to certain networks and it would randomly get disconnected. It would often have trouble giving me a list of networks when I wasn't connected, and it would refuse to list any networks if it was already connected to one. While connecting, wicd would use 100% CPU for the entire 10 seconds it took to connect, and if it failed, it would continue reporting progress anyway and using 100% CPU even after my kernel logs clearly indicated that the connection had already failed.
A few days ago, I switched to wpa_supplicant. You don't need to write any configuration files, contrary to what I was previously told - there's a wpa_gui that works great. I haven't had a single disconnect or failed connection since I got it working. It uses almost zero CPU while connecting, and takes half as long as wicd does to connect.
The other chipsets are better. The best ones are, as always, Intel chipsets. They Just Work. Fortunately my latest notebook was Intel all the way through. The only thing I had to do was add the Intel firmware to my installation, and then wi-fi and bluetooth worked absolutely perfectly with nothing to do from my side - all automatic.
For Broadcom-equipped computers I instead rely on Ethernet. So I have a small Asus dongle which can do everything, including wi-fi to Ethernet. Works fine, I'm using it right now.
It's looking like this is a Mint problem which is odd because that's supposed to be the most user friendly distro out there. However, both Slacko puppy and Cub Linux are a bit rough around the edges, so I may try Debian or Ubuntu.
I switched to Mint recently and on initial setup, the wi-fi worked fine, two days later it stopped working even though the blue light on the panel remains lit. Tell me more about the switch to the wpa_ gui.
Thanks
Jim
Things aren't bad at the moment but it's taken a whole new modem/router to do it. I think they still occasionally have to power cycle the modem to print.
One WiFi dongle is a no name I got from Adafruit for my Raspberry Pi Zero and it works with Raspbian. The other is an edimax which is also popular with Raspbian users. The PCIe WiFi card was salvage from an old laptop and is generic.
The weird part is that the dongles work with every distribution I tried them with except the one I planned to used! But that's Murphy's law for you.
Update: I installed Cub Linux because it works and can be upgraded to include what I need.
Things don't usually just break with time like that. Did you install an update that broke it, or is it time to reboot?
I don't really know anything about Mint. I used Ubuntu a long time ago until I got fed up with it. After that, I tried some other distros and eventually gave up and just used OSX for a while. I switched to Gentoo Linux about two years ago, and I've been loving it ever since. I'll tell you what worked for me on my Gentoo, but it might not work for you, since, while Gentoo makes you (lets you, oh the freedom!) do everything yourself, Mint and friends are "user friendly" and want to do things in their own way.
It might not be possible to get wpa_gui to work properly on Mint without some hackery, but here's what I would try. It might break your system, and a quick googling didn't find anyone else using wpa_supplicant on Mint.
First, you'll need to make sure wpa_supplicant and wpa_gui are installed. I imagine wpa_supplicant will already be installed, but it might not be a bad idea to explicitly tell it to install it anyway, so that it knows that you actually want it and that it's not just installed because something else happens to need it.
Then, tell your init system to stop NetworkManager. I use OpenRC, but Mint uses either Upstart or systemd and I don't know how to use either of them.
Then, make a backup of your old /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf (if it already exists), and then put this in it:
The first line lets you run wpa_gui as any user in group wheel and not just as root, and the second tells wpa_gui that it's allowed to edit the config for you, so you don't have to do it yourself.
At this point, you might need to make sure your wireless network interface is up. Again, I only know how to do this through OpenRC.
Then, run "sudo wpa_supplicant" in a terminal. Once you get it working, you'll want to tell your init system to run "wpa_supplicant" for you, but for testing, we'll just run it in a terminal.
Finally, run "wpa_gui -t" in another terminal. A new icon should appear in your notification area (in the place where NetworkManager usually is). The old NetworkManager icon will probably also be there, and it will probably complain if you tell it to do anything, since you stopped NetworkManager. Click on the wpa_gui icon, and a window should show up. Tell it to connect to your router.
Once you have it working, tell your init system not to start NetworkManager anymore and to start wpa_supplicant instead. Also, tell your desktop environment not to start the NetworkManager icon program in the notification area, and to start "wpa_gui -t" instead. The "-t" is to make it start minimized to the tray - you probably don't want it popping up every time you log in.
We are all "idiots" I guess you could say when we first start, then we learn bit by bit or perhaps get thrown into the deep end, and then it's not so bad.
Now, you can only have the same problem if you have the exact same setup and software. If you have different hardware, different WiFi, different distro, then the solution will be different. Can you describe your hardware and software setup as if we were total idiots?
You might try looking at the Arch Linux wiki's page about wpa_supplicant: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/WPA_supplicant. The instructions on their wiki tends to work on other distros. I use their instructions to do stuff on Gentoo all the time, and Arch and Gentoo are completely unrelated different distros.
If you follow the Arch instructions, make sure you look at the Advanced Usage configuration, which says how to set it up so you can run wpa_gui as any user in group wheel (i.e. generally those who can sudo), and not only as root. The Gentoo instructions also say how to allow group wheel to change stuff, but they do it slightly differently. Also, I'd recommend skipping the wpa_cli part (unless you need to do it without X) and just using wpa_gui instead.
The only problem was of course WiFi it always is. I was able to install the firmware management tools for the gizmo that this system uses.
Oh and no robots were involved in the process. However there's a big crowd of erco's own enroute to a certain location.....
buss 001 device 004:ID15a9:0004 gemtek wubr-1766[relink rt2571v]
buss 001 device 003:ID7392-7811 Edimax Technology Co. LTD EW-7811un 802.11n wireless adapter [realtek RTL8188CUS]
buss001 device 001:ID1d6b:002Linux foundation 2.0 root hub
buss 002 devie 002: ID1d03f0:1024 Hewlett Packard smart card keyboard
buss 002 device 001:ID1d6b:0001 Linux foundation 1.1 root hub
Being methodical, making no assumptions whatsoever, and eliminating possibility after possibility then cross-checking is the basis of troubleshooting problems. Be patient knowing that you will find a solution and will be more equipped to deal with other non-related problems that WILL arise.
I'm not sure how to change the router settings, but ive got no problems with any other electronics in the house accessing the router [xbox one, xbox360,ps 3, amazon fire stick, various phones and tablets]
I suppose that's all you can say for someone so knowledgeable that they don't know how to change the router settings? Try your dongle on the xbox or another computer if you were really serious in trying to find out what's going on unless you know for absolutely sure that the dongle works with every router and computer. But just simply turning off WiFi security to test the dongle + router combo should be a no-brainer.
Of those wi-fi chipsets where there are problems, the cause is without exception the vendor of said chipset, by either a) providing a badly written driver, and/or b) not documenting their chipsets. In other words, if it doesn't work, complain to the vendor, not the Linux distro provider. Developers will try to reverse-engineer the chipset where documentation is weak or non-existent, but some of these chipsets have quirks which have to be coded around and that is difficult without documentation. The vendor has the knowledge but not always the will. Those rtl chipsets are in my experience rubbish in every way. Then there's Broadcomm, the king of undocumented. They actually provide a Linux driver with source, but is is poorly written (wouldn't pass code review where I work), and works badly or not at all, depending on actual chip. But there are many drivers in the Linux kernel, for many chipsets, and many work very well.
The opposite of vendors like those I mentioned above is Intel. My new NEC laptop is Intel through and through (including wi-fi and bluetooth), and everything Just Works. Better than anything I have used, on any platform. Connection is instant, fast, 100% reliable, at home or around town.
Tor-
Where do you get an intel usb wifi dongle? Google is not my friend today
That's why I bought the Edimax dongle. Supposedly it works awesomely on a raspberry Pi, which is a Linux beast.
I was amazed recently when my K Desktop Environment found the dongle and the network and got itself all connected with out any hasseling around.
I'll have to read this thread through again and try and spot a clue....
But some vendors are worse than others. Not a wi-fi dongle, but the Apple USB Ethernet dongle has used the exact same chipset variant for a very long time. It's guaranteed to work (with Linux, and e.g. Asus Android tablets).
Fortunately motherboard chipsets tend to stay the same, mostly. So my small notebook has a useless Broadcom chipset, and that particular Samsung model has never changed that. And as I mentioned my NEC laptop is Intel all through, and I'm confident it will continue to stay so so that if I buy the same model, or even a slightly newer one at a later time, it'll still be Intel. So, in my case, I don't need a dongle for the NEC. A relief. For the Samsung I use not a USB wi-fi dongle, but instead a tiny Asus six-in-one Ethernet dongle. It works as a wi-fi interface as part of what it does, and very well too. And Ethernet drivers are never a problem in any case, it looks like USB drivers can more easily hang or crash the system than Ethernet.
@Heater, the problem, at least for Shawn, seems to be an RTL8188 chipset (or a variant of). Those are indeed tricky sometimes (they must somehow be different even with the same number). So, RealTek and Broadcom - that's where wi-fi issues are concentrated. Depending on exact variant of chipset. Those two vendors are rubbish anyway, there's no way around it. My Samsung notebook uses Realtek for Ethernet btw, and even though it apparently works fine, when I look at the log it disconnects and reconnects all the time - it's just that it's not affecting the overall performance. And the driver is missing a proper mii-interface too, so I can't check connection availability until the interface is brought up (for those of you who don't understand what that's about - never mind, it's low-level and not really important for most people).
My new Surface Pro 4 connects to WIFI everywhere without issue. Except the WIFI of one particular hotel. There it drops the connection after some minutes of use and refuses to reconnect. The only way to get it to connect again is to tell Win 10 to forget the access point and restart the machine.
It's not just Linux that has issues with WIFI.
https:sites.google.com/site/easylinuxtipsproject/reserve-7
Typing this from my computer room now! Now to download an IDE!