Gutsy and Atheros wireless - my experience

[Derek Broughton]

Mike Leone wrote:

> Derek Broughton (news at pointerstop.ca) had this to say on 10/29/07 at
> 09:10:
>> Mike Leone wrote:
>> 
>> > I needed to install kwlan;
>> 
>> why?
> 
> Because I needed WPA support, and installing wpa_supplicant said it wanted
> it. (I think) Something wanted it; I didn't just make that up. :-)

wpa_supplicant is already installed as a dependency of network-manager-kde -
and WPA is supported by NM - so I still don't see why you need kwlan.

$ apt-cache rdepends wpasupplicant
wpasupplicant
Reverse Depends:
  wpagui
  wifi-radar
  network-config
  madwifi-tools
  kwlan
  ubuntu-minimal
  network-manager

Since, in fact, it's a requirement of ubuntu-minimal, you can't even remove
wpasupplicant without it complaining.

>> OK, that's not nice, but again - since you threw out the network software
>> that comes as part of kubuntu, you're not in much of a position to
>> complain.
> 
> Sure I am - I didn't "throw out" anything, anyhting that got uninstalled
> was done by aptitude (well, I told it to, but that was because it
> recommended it).

No, it didn't.

> I couldn't get the NIC to be recognized at all with network-manager.
> 
> What's with the attitude? You don't have to respond, you know, and I never
> said that my experiences were the same as everyone's.

The attitude is all on your part.  You complain that gutsy doesn't work -
but you're not testing gutsy as installed.  You threw out network-manager
and installed another wifi manager that you don't even understand the use
of.

If the NIC wasn't "recognized", I have real trouble believing kwlan would do
a better job - this doesn't happen at the manager level, it happens at the
kernel.  My guess - impossible to tell unless you're prepared to try
network manager again - is that driver module never got loaded (and yes,
under NM that does occasionally happen on my laptop).
-- 
derek