Wifi

Post here if you are a new Porteus member and you're looking for some help.
TTW
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Wifi

Post#1 by TTW » 15 Jul 2015, 10:53

There appears to be a number of questions asked about wifi both in the forum and in the FAQS.

Most seem to relate to early releases which had issues with broadcom devices and I see a fix was found to blacklist the default driver.

Can anyone confirm if the troubles persist or has the fix been incorporated into later releases? Wifi has always been a problem for me apart form when I use Saluki. Jemimah seemed to understand it and her Frisbee network manager works beautifully.

Am I safe to assume that the current release is likely to work out of the box?

Thanks
TTW

donald
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Re: Wifi

Post#2 by donald » 15 Jul 2015, 12:44

Yes and no or maybe..
How should one know when you don't tell us which wifi chipset is in use.
Invest 10 min and prepare a porteus thumb drive,boot it,and you will get the answer.. 8)

TTW
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Re: Wifi

Post#3 by TTW » 15 Jul 2015, 13:18

Yes hoping to test it this evening and at that point should get details of the wifi chipset.

Please don't think that I can not be bothered to try something out and invest a little time into it. Quite the contrary actually. My question was more to understand the likely support given to newbies for this distro. Example; if a problem was identified in release 1.x and a solution found then would it be incorporated into later releases?

I am interested in Porteus as a solution that does not need technical tinkering by the user - not because I can't do it but because I want to be part of something that appeals to more than just the linux initiated. It is a challenge to get people to try linux when all they know is Windows. If they get to burning a live CD and when they turn it on they don't have any wifi for example in my experience they are not likely to invest much time making it work.

I will post back later with my success or otherwise in connecting to wifi.

TTW

donald
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Re: Wifi

Post#4 by donald » 15 Jul 2015, 14:51

--> if a problem was identified..and a solution found..would it be incorporated into later releases? <--
yep...and if it was a serious bug, it's most likely already fixed upstream

--> when all they know is Windows...they are not likely to invest much time <--
sad but true,...they always forget how long it took to get used to Windows.

btw
If my previous post did sound a little rude, (it was not meant to be),..pardon.

TTW
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Re: Wifi

Post#5 by TTW » 15 Jul 2015, 14:59

Thanks

Not rude but a little abrupt. Don't worry I know what it's like on forum when people ask questions without giving enough info.

I'm thick skinned and stubborn enough not to give up at the first hurdle. I'm hoping that moving to a slackware distro will educate me more on linux and get me able to construct more things for myself. So I am prepared to invest time but was just looking to see what the likely hurdles would be.

Will let you know how the install goes.

TTW

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Re: Wifi

Post#6 by francois » 15 Jul 2015, 15:53

I do not know of a wifi card that porteus would not support or troubleshoot and support. :wink:
Prendre son temps, profiter de celui qui passe.

TTW
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Re: Wifi

Post#7 by TTW » 16 Jul 2015, 08:04

Well I booted from the live cd on my laptop and there was no Wifi. On checking I got the following:

05:00.0 Network controller [0280] Broadcom corporation BCM4311 802.11b/g WLAN [1404:4311] (rev01)
Subsystem: Dell Wireless 1390 WLAN Minicard [1208:0007]
kernal driver in use: b43-pci-bridge
kernal modules : ssb,wl

Seems like I have to go and blacklist the wl driver which I cannot do solely from the live CD.

For comparison I created a USB and put that in my netbook which immediately offered me a choice of wifi networks to join.

TTW

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Re: Wifi

Post#8 by francois » 16 Jul 2015, 10:09

So you know the solution for the broadcom driver for your desktop. I had a broadcom card on a HP laptop. It used to work with broadcom-sta.

Let us know if the proven is fixed on your desktop with wl blacklisting
Prendre son temps, profiter de celui qui passe.

TTW
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Re: Wifi

Post#9 by TTW » 16 Jul 2015, 10:21

francois wrote:So you know the solution for the broadcom driver for your desktop. I had a broadcom card on a HP laptop. It used to work with broadcom-sta.

Let us know if the proven is fixed on your desktop with wl blacklisting
Yes I know about the fix. May be some time before I try it as I will experiment with Porteus on the netbook.
I wouldn't call this a solution as to me the idea is that Porteus lives on my USB and can easily be moved from one laptop to another as required. If I have to check the wifi driver and blacklist file each time I try a new device then that isn't user friendly.

A solution in my mind is one that doesn't involve the user. The Network manager would either automatically sort out the blacklist by trying various driver options until a network was found or at last operate as a GUI for the user to try different options without rewriting what are effectively config files.

TTW

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Re: Wifi

Post#10 by francois » 16 Jul 2015, 17:22

You could have some script checking for the presence of broadcom WiFi
- yes then blacklist
- no stay as it is

Or have a menu.list with two entries
-: with out broadcom
- with broadcom

This last one seems more realistic.
Prendre son temps, profiter de celui qui passe.

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