Linuxtard...

[viper37]

Ick.  I think I went through 3 or 4 wifi adapters trying to get one that worked right.  Finally got NDISWrapper to cooperate, but then couldn't get that Netgear adapter to keep a connection longer than a few minutes.

I had an old Netgear USB adapter.  Didn't work.
Tried a newer D-Link USB (N) adapter.  Didn't work.
My PCI-E adapter is not even listed.

I stop bothering.

[Barrister]

Where is this crap about Ubuntu, or any Linux distro, not being able to handle wireless networking coming from?  I've never had any issues in Ubuntu that weren't due to a flaky NIC.  My EEE's connection is flawless.

err... how about from the anandtech article I posted?  And from the personal anecdotes of people in this thread?

It's not that linux can't handle wireless.  It's that many wireless cards don't have the proper drivers, or you need to compile them yourself, or that they are in general a huge pain in the ass to get working.

[Alexandru H.]

Where is this crap about Ubuntu, or any Linux distro, not being able to handle wireless networking coming from?  I've never had any issues in Ubuntu that weren't due to a flaky NIC.  My EEE's connection is flawless.

err... how about from the anandtech article I posted?  And from the personal anecdotes of people in this thread?

It's not that linux can't handle wireless.  It's that many wireless cards don't have the proper drivers, or you need to compile them yourself, or that they are in general a huge pain in the ass to get working.

I already told the story of the endless search on the net for a suitable driver for my wireless... on a Windows XP. If you could believe it, the driver that came with it did not work on XP.

This is a linux thread, therefore it's logical to try and find its flaws. If it were a Windows thread, I'd tell the story of my nephew that returned today from a week long trip, opened his computer, saw that the Windows OS was giving him a blue screen, restarted it only to find all the data from his second partition gone, deleted, erased.

[DontSayBanana]

Don't know about Xandros, but I suppose it works the same as Ubuntu.

Ubuntu, when you download it includes a lot of codecs/decoders that are open source.
Some free stuff might be available (like MP3 codecs) that are given away for free, but are not open source.

With DVD decryption, you need an additional package, that is free of charge, but since it allows you to circumvent the encryption of a DVD, it is illegal in the US, as per the DMCA, hence not incorporated in the downloads.

Rule of thumb: Any DVD that works in Windows will work on Linux based system.  Blu Ray is another matter entirely, but apparently, they are working on it.

There must be some kind of license scheme with decryption, then.  On mine, DVDs were decoded, but not decrypted, so I wasn't able to watch any commercial DVDs on my linux comp.  After replacing my power supply and putting Windows back on, I found decryption was still iffy and ended up having to buy a commercial codec (Sonic CinePlayer)to play pressed DVDs.

[frunk]

Never had any problems with wireless cards and Linux, but then I specifically made sure the wireless cards had linux drivers before I bought them.  Wasn't hard to find, most of them do.

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

err... how about from the anandtech article I posted?  And from the personal anecdotes of people in this thread?

It's not that linux can't handle wireless.  It's that many wireless cards don't have the proper drivers, or you need to compile them yourself, or that they are in general a huge pain in the ass to get working.

Sorry, I haven't had time to finish the article yet.

My personal experience, though, is that I've never had issues with wireless cards that weren't hardware related, and I have yet to find a PCMCIA or USB adapter that is anywhere near as reliable as a built-in chipset.

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

Ick.  I think I went through 3 or 4 wifi adapters trying to get one that worked right.  Finally got NDISWrapper to cooperate, but then couldn't get that Netgear adapter to keep a connection longer than a few minutes.

I had the same problem with a Netgear PCMCIA card.  In Linux and Windows.  I'm never buying Netgear's products again.

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

Ubuntu does have an issue with the wireless manager that gets installed by default, though.  Network Manager is inferior to wicd, and I did have configuration issues with my connections before I switched.

[DontSayBanana]

I had the same problem with a Netgear PCMCIA card.  In Linux and Windows.  I'm never buying Netgear's products again.

I've found Netgear to be marginally worse than Linksys.  Whenever anybody asks for wireless recommendations from me, I tell them to fork over the extra cash for a D-Link, as it's worth it.

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

I've found Netgear to be marginally worse than Linksys.  Whenever anybody asks for wireless recommendations from me, I tell them to fork over the extra cash for a D-Link, as it's worth it.

I've come down firmly in Rosewill's camp, which is hard to recommend to people since their stuff isn't carried by most stores.

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

err... how about from the anandtech article I posted?

I must have missed it, since I've read the article in spurts over several days.  What page is it on?

And from the personal anecdotes of people in this thread?

That was a response to the personal anecdotes in this thread, which were sparse on details until after I said this.

Sorry about the choppy replies.  I've been extra scatterbrained lately.

[derspiess]

A buddy of mine, who is a lifelong Mac fanboy, bought a Dell Mini 9 to turn into a Hackintosh.  He's loving Ubuntu so much now that he's not sure he wants to put Leopard on it :

[Barrister]

A buddy of mine, who is a lifelong Mac fanboy, bought a Dell Mini 9 to turn into a Hackintosh.  He's loving Ubuntu so much now that he's not sure he wants to put Leopard on it :

Apparently the Dell Mini's make very nice hackintoshes.

[viper37]

I already told the story of the endless search on the net for a suitable driver for my wireless... on a Windows XP. If you could believe it, the driver that came with it did not work on XP.

Windows XP was built in what, 2002-2003?
Vista is the current OS.  Vista has no driver problems with wireless adapters afaik.
Linux having problems with wireless adapters in 2002-2003, I could understand.
In 2009, I don't.

This is a linux thread, therefore it's logical to try and find its flaws. If it were a Windows thread, I'd tell the story of my nephew that returned today from a week long trip, opened his computer, saw that the Windows OS was giving him a blue screen, restarted it only to find all the data from his second partition gone, deleted, erased.

We're not saying Linux (whatever flavour you may prefer) is a butched up OS that completely crap.
We're just saying that for the average user, it is no good.  It's still far from Windows, though it's getting closer.

I named the issues that personally prevent me from using Ubuntu on any of my machine as the default OS.  I like that little OS.  It's fast, it's not that hard to use, but sometimes, you just hit your head on a wall.  And these happen to be critical issues for me.

[viper37]

There must be some kind of license scheme with decryption, then.  On mine, DVDs were decoded, but not decrypted, so I wasn't able to watch any commercial DVDs on my linux comp.  After replacing my power supply and putting Windows back on, I found decryption was still iffy and ended up having to buy a commercial codec (Sonic CinePlayer)to play pressed DVDs.

that is possibly the problem.  Some DVDs won't play easily in a computer.
I'll check some of mine tonight to see.