One of the major changes mentioned in yesterday's release announcement for the Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn Beta was "excellent wireless networking support". As I haven't yet blogged about the 802.11abg WiFi support in Feisty Fawn nor has it been covered on Phoronix, I decided to talk about it now with the Feisty Fawn beta release. For today's purposes I had loaded up Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn beta on a Lenovo ThinkPad T60, which has an integrated Intel 3945 wireless connection. I also had inserted a NetGear PCMCIA card, which at heart is an Atheros 802.11g Chipset.

Immediately upon booting Ubuntu I was made aware that in the Ubuntu Restricted Drivers Manager were two drivers enabled and turned on by default. The drivers were named Atheros Hardware Access Layer (HAL) and Intel PRO/Wireless 3945 Network Connection driver for Linux. With the "blob manager" automatically loading these two drivers, both wireless interfaces were activated "out of the box". Network Manager was also loaded by default, which connected to an open Phoronix wireless connection right away.

One of the essential features for Feisty Fawn was network-roaming support, which did make the deadline for inclusion. The objective of Ubuntu's network-roaming is to automatically connect/disconnect to and from various dynamically configured networks and ultimately providing a better user experience when connecting to these networks. You can enable roaming mode for a wireless interface through Network Settings (System > Administration > Network).

For technical reference, the specific Chipset from Atheros I used was the AR5212 802.11abg NIC and was revision 01. The Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG was revision 02. To briefly sum up everything I had tried with the wireless networking support in Feisty Fawn, I was extremely pleased by what I had seen. Both the Atheros AR25212 and Intel 3945ABG wireless interfaces had worked immediately upon booting Ubuntu Feisty Fawn through the Restricted Drivers Manager and managing the wireless connections through NetworkManager. There was no installing extra packages or dealing with any firmware or any configuration files. For new users, the networking support found in Feisty Fawn is a godsend. I haven't tried any Broadcom 802.11g WiFi chips with Feisty Fawn, but most of those (if not all) should work as well. Fedora 7 is also supposed to have rock solid wireless support. However, at this point the wireless support in Fedora 7 doesn't look as promising as Ubuntu's due to the tighter free standards with Fedora when it comes to binary blobs and firmware.

Easy setup of wireless devices in Ubuntu is a very important thing, and it is wonderful that the developers are seeing that. I am a member of the Ubuntu Linux project and it makes me proud to see such wonderful strides being made towards making Ubuntu fit for the "average Joe (or Jane)".

I have the Broadcom 4318 and Feisty Fawn took care of the driver install for me, it was great!

After two days setting my ra0 I did managed it for getting up after boot. But it drops down one or two minutes after. My card chipset is Ralink. Ubuntu wireless has been a nightmare for me.

This is fantastic news. I couldn't get the previous version of Ubuntu to recognize even the most common of my wireless cards, and that's what caused me to uninstall it (a laptop without internet access is about as good as a paperweight). I'm definitely going to install Feisty Fawn after reading this.

I also have a T60 with feisty on it. Yes, it works great, Ubuntu really surprises me with a lot of its features (I've run linux since the slackware days). It's also great how they do include the proprietary crap instead of making you jump through hoops. However, I will just gripe that ipw3945 crashes on me randomly. The system stays up, but the network dies. This is usually when I'm watching porn (pulling heavy traffic through a sshfs), which is doubly annoying. I've no doubt that if this was an open source driver, this would not be happening, due to the much quicker development feedback cycle. I'm sure I could at least take the output of dmesg and send it in as a bug or something, but really, these proprietary wireless driver guys have failed to fix bug #1 - provide an open driver!! This bullshit about 'ooooh peoeple could modify the code and transmit at 10 watts of power, and we're scared of the FCC' has got to stop. The 2nd amendment, sony v betamax, et al have shown that just because something can be used for an illegal purpose does not rule out that item itself. I wish chipset manufacturers would finally come around and realize theres nothing novel in their hardware APIs, and that releasing datasheets would make their lives a lot easier.

I'm glad that restricted drivers works good for you.

In my case, I did bought a PCI wireless card with an open source driver for it (ralink chipset).

It was not as easy to install with Dapper (I had to download and compile the kernel module) but at least it worked flawlessly with that old ubuntu.

Now Feisty is here, with better wireless support and the kernel module already built-in.

But to my deception, it is incompatible with the kernel provided.

Result: Random system freeze. Stupid !

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-meta/+bug/94944

Note: this is a bug in the amd64 version of Ubuntu 7.04 BETA! I did not test the i386 version yet. And Do not forget, this is not a final product and does not reflect in any way the value or stability of the final product.

Sorry for disturbing.

dont use ATI cards on LInux Nvidia or Intel

I have a network card that uses the Marvell 8835 Libertas chipset... I can't get it working. From all the symptoms, support for my card is still in the Dapper and Edgy age...

Have anyone succeeded with connecting thru intel 3945 using wpa encryption? it doesn't work for me. it tries several times and ends with no luck

For me, the roaming mode is able to connect to unsecured networks only. No luck with WEP, just keeps asking for password. But, manually it's OK.

I was a long time Fedora user. Horrible wireless support in FC 5 and 6 drove me away. I could not get anything working even after fiddling with ndiswarpper for hours. I bought a couple different cards, could never get them working. They worked "out of the box" in both Ububtu 6.10 and 7.04. Excellent job guys. Keep up the work.

Feisty not only breaks on install with my ATI Radeon x1400 (Dell Inspiron 6400) but once it is installed, WPA doesn't work inside NetworkManager like Ubuntu claims.

Where's the 'just works' philosophy? I'd use Linux seriously if I didn't have to muck about with config files when I want to connect to the internet.

And moving between networks? Forget about it.

Oh, yeah, I also had to go to the keyring manager and set up a new keyring called 'default' first, so that it would actually remember the password and save it somewhere!

hope this helps.

I have an HP Pavilion 9210 (AMD Turion 64X2) which is a dual boot Vista and Ubuntu. When Feisty Fawn was first installed wireless using the internal bcm43xx worked perfectly. Several weeks later after allowing an update it ceased to operate and nothing I try will repair it. I can "see" the neighbors wireless essid's but cannot access them. In addition, I can no longer access my own router or make ANY network connection. The wired LAN works fine as always. Hope someone smarter than I can soon get this fixed. Otherwise Feisty is working very well and is a noteworthy improvement ovet previous versions. Thanks in advance, Harry Wert - Physicist

I have a Dell Latitude D820 w/ 8295 internal wireless. I followed all the wpa_supplicant directions to no avail, then I read where the smart person before me turned roaming back on and allowed the system to find the network.

That worked, sort of, in that it showed connected, but did nothing. The indicator showed full strength.

I removed all wpa_supplicant references, rebooted, and tried again. Same.

Then it occurred to me that I was using static addresses on my network, so I turned on the router's DHCP server and BOOM - I was asked for the passphrase and was connected.

Bravo on the functionality, Ubuntu!
Not so bravo on the docs.


Now all I have to do is get rid of the Redmond Menace on the other partition and I'm good!

well ive just confirmed that i 100% have feisty fawn. it didnt support wpa out of the box. the latest download didnt work either, ie today downloaded. have spent 2 weeks on this version trying to get it work trying all sorts of things and failed. no wpa support what so ever. so how am i getting on the internet. well im just using internet connection sharing and using my windows vista box to get the wpa access. pretty sad ive got linux being connected by a stable vista box. oh and yes the vista box has been up for 6 months now non stop and still running. still wanna get wpa working tho. ITS FAR from easy.

I have the same problem, why is that? and could you fix it? how?.. thanks!

Ubunty 7.04 on IBM T23 with Atheros Wi-Fi. Everything works, including WEP and WPA (tested both). Hence I even have nice GUI gadgets for the Thinpad keys.

great work - lost you a few times but got there

I am new to Ubuntu... really working hard to get off the MS OS drug... SNAG - Feisty Wireless is not working for me with Belkin model F5D8010 wireless card. I am trying... hitting all the websites... I dont get the drop down menu as described and I dont have an option to choose a wireless network for some reason. Anyway, I have been telling folks about Ubuntu and I have been happy to have it finally installed, but I cannot sell anyone on this if I cannot get them wireless... as well myself.

Um.. I had the same problems with WPA. I tried the roaming option. Once I found my network, I would input my key, but it would not connect. But the roaming bars were still on, So I figure the computer was still trying, once I got to the bottom of this page, I looked at my ubuntu laptop to notice that I was connected! My solution for the problem was patience even though my computer told me that the connection wasn't going to happen.

Cracked it!

I installed this little package in synaptic and I can use WEP without a problem.

Network manager even shows me an accurate signal bar!

hostapd

It manages WEP and WPA for 802.11 wireless cards.
I found the solution here.

Thanks gstamp!

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=75017


Let me know how it works for you!

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